What does Joaquin Castro know about Jared Kushner and Jamal Khashoggi’s murder that we don’t?

| 9:05 pm EDT October 19, 2018
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Democratic Congressman Joaquin Castro, an even-handed guy, appeared on CNN today and suggested that Jared Kushner may have supplied the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia with a “hit list” or “enemies list” that included the name of Jamal Khashoggi, who has since apparently been murdered and dismembered by the Saudi Arabian government. Does he know something that we don’t?

While some observers thought that Joaquin Castro was accusing Jared Kushner of having told the Saudi Crown Prince to murder Khashoggi, our interpretation of Castro’s words was that he was accusing Kushner of having generically told the Crown Prince to do something about Khashoggi. In such case, Kushner wouldn’t be liable for the murder unless he provided such a list with the expectation that the Crown Prince would indeed do “something” that involved violence.

After Castro’s CNN appearance, he took to Twitter to clarify his remarks, stating “To be clear, I did not intend to accuse Jared Kushner of orchestrating anything.” He went on to say that his assertions about Kushner’s “enemies list” were based on “press reporting” and he provided links to a number of past and present news articles spelling out the inappropriately close relationship between Kushner and the Crown Prince. The question, of course, is whether Castro knows something about this that we don’t.

Joaquin Castro sits on the House Intelligence Committee, so in general, yes, he knows quite a number of things that we don’t. In this instance you have to wonder if he was so confident in his on-air assertions about Jared Kushner’s involvement because he’s been briefed on something that’s not yet public, or if he was indeed simply basing his assertions on what’s publicly known. Again, Castro is an even-handed guy in general. So we’ll see where this is headed.