Trump financier apologises for describing response to Khashoggi murder a ‘mistake’

A close ally of US President Donald Trump has been accused of defending the killers of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi during a speech in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Tom Barrack – a billionaire financier and close friend of Trump – described Western criticism of the killing of Khashoggi as a “mistake”. The remark, for which he has since apologised, was made during a panel discussion on Tuesday in the Emirati capital Abu Dhabi.

Asked about Khashoggi’s murder, Barrack said that “the atrocities in America are equal or worse to the atrocities in Saudi Arabia” adding that it was a “mistake” to try to dictate a moral code to Saudi Arabia.

Barrack went on to claim that US criticism of Khashoggi’s murder – which took place in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, on 2 October – was part of a history of Western misunderstanding of the region. “I believe that the problem with what’s happened with the Khashoggi incident is the same problem of the west misunderstanding the east that’s existed since Sykes-Picot,” he said, referring to the secret 1916 protocol by which Britain and France agreed to carve up the Middle East in the aftermath of World War I.

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Implying that the West was dictating moral codes to the Gulf country, Barrack was quoted saying: “The atrocities in any autocratic country are dictated by the rule of law […] so for us to dictate what we think is the moral code there, when we have a young man [Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman] and regime that is trying to push themselves in to 2030, I think is a mistake.”

Barrack is a long-time friend and confidante of President Trump and played a key role in his 2016 election campaign. According to the New York Times, Barrack was a top fundraiser and trusted gatekeeper who opened communications with the Emiratis and Saudis during the Trump campaign. He is said to have made his career connecting Middle Eastern money with opportunities in US real estate.

Barrack has attempted to undo the potential damage to his reputation for his fulsome support of the Saudi Crown Prince by apologising yesterday, releasing a statement to say that he believed the murder of Khashoggi was “reprehensible” and that he should have made this clear in his earlier remarks to a conference organised by the Milken Institute in the UAE.

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