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(WASHINGTON) – President Donald Trump's national security advisor defended Tuesday his decision not to listen to the audio recording of the badbadination of a Saudi journalist, saying he had chose not to listen because he did not speak Arabic.
"What I am going to learn – if they spoke Korean, I would not get any more either," John Bolton told reporters at a briefing at the White House. Bolton added that he was able to get all the necessary information by reading a transcription of the recording.
"Arabic-speaking people have listened to the tape and given us the substance of what it contains," said Bolton. When he insisted on the issue, Bolton said that he thought he understood the content of the audio recording well. "I am very pleased that we know what has been recorded on the tape, this has been taken into account in the President's decision and he has made his position very clear," he said.
The audio recording quickly became a key piece of evidence amid conflicting accounts of the murder of Jamal Khashsoggi at a Saudi consulate in Turkey in October. Saudi officials have initially claimed that Khashoggi had left the consulate before declaring that he had been killed during a botched operation aimed at forcing the writer back into the kingdom by force.
US intelligence concluded that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman should at least be aware of the plot to kill Khashoggi, prompting many members of Congress to urge the US government to take a tougher stance with the government. main ally of the Gulf.
Trump said the United States would no longer punish Saudi Arabia. The president said the benefits of good relations with the kingdom outweighed the possibility that his crown prince ordered the badbadination.
In a statement last week about the possibility that the crown prince ordered the murder, Trump said: "Maybe yes, maybe not."
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan often makes reference to audio recording in an attempt to put pressure on Saudi Arabia, a key regional foe.
"The recording is really atrocious," Erdogan was quoted as saying in the pro-government Yeni Safak newspaper. "In fact, when the Saudi intelligence officer listened to the recording, he was so shocked that he said," This one probably took heroin. " Only someone who was taking heroin would do it. "
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