He doesn't want to hear the Khashoggi tape

His people say he shouldn't listen to it.  Those voices in his head again.

Asked if the CIA had assessed whether the crown prince — Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler — was behind the killing, Trump said, "They have not assessed anything yet. It's too early. That was a very premature report."

The president added that the report coming early next week is expected to shed more light on "what we think the overall impact was, who caused it and who did it."

“In the meantime," Trump continued, "we are doing things to some people that we know for a fact were involved and we’re being very tough on a lot of people.”

The U.S. announced sanctions against 17 Saudi Arabian officials over Khashoggi's killing on Thursday.

  NBC

The U.S. sanctions fall under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act that allows the government to target perpetrators of human rights violations with sanctions, and will block any property or interests in property the individuals have within or transiting U.S. jurisdictions.

  NBC

Ooooh. Putin's not gonna be happy about that.

President Trump said last week that he would form a “very strong opinion” about how the United States should respond to the brutal killing of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist, after Saudi Arabia presented the results of its own investigation of the crime.

But when the Saudis delivered that report on Thursday, Mr. Trump reacted with silence.

Instead, the Trump administration, as expected, imposed sanctions on 17 Saudis accused of involvement in the killing.

[...]

The Treasury Department named Saud al-Qahtani, a senior official close to Prince Mohammed, saying he was “part of the planning and execution of the operation that led to the killing of Mr. Khashoggi.”

[...]

But the list did not include Ahmed al-Assiri, a former deputy head of the Saudi intelligence service. Mr. Assiri, also a confidant of Prince Mohammed, was believed to have masterminded the operation to confront Mr. Khashoggi in the consulate in Istanbul. He was cashiered from his post and viewed as the most prominent fall guy for the operation.

But Mr. Assiri has his own ties to the Trump administration. In September, he met with senior officials, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in New York on the sidelines of a conference organized by the group United Against Nuclear Iran.

[...]

The sanctions will freeze financial assets of the targets, if they are under United States jurisdiction, and prohibit transactions with them. It also prevents the Saudis from traveling to the United States — something that experts said was unlikely in any event.

[...]

The sanctions did little to quell passions on Capitol Hill, where Democrats and Republicans called on the White House to take much tougher action against Saudi Arabia, including halting military sales and forcing the kingdom to wind down a ruinous civil war in neighboring Yemen.

[...]

Senator Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican who has long been critical of Saudi Arabia’s Yemen campaign, said on CNN: “Sanctioning people who are already in jail is sort of like pretending to do something. [...] Five of them are on death row. Do you think they really care that they’ve been sanctioned?”

[...]

“It is not the end of the story,” said Representative Adam B. Schiff, the California Democrat who is the incoming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. “It can’t be.”

[...]

A senior administration official said the United States was unlikely to take further steps against Saudi leaders, suggesting that both sides hope to put the episode behind them.

Earlier this week, the national security adviser, John R. Bolton, said a recording of Mr. Khashoggi’s killing did not implicate Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. And Mr. Trump has steadfastly refused to finger Prince Mohammed, who is a close ally of his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, and a linchpin of the administration’s Middle East policy, though he has condemned Saudi Arabia’s handling of the killing as “the worst cover-up ever.”

  NYT

That was a complaint. If they'd done a better job of it, he wouldn't be in this position.