“I think a smoking gun would certainly help," said Sen. Roy Blunt. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Congress ‘Smoking gun’ would help implicate Saudi prince, Senate Republican says

A top Senate Republican said Sunday that “high confidence” by American intelligence officials may not be enough to implicate Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi and that “a smoking gun” would help justify U.S. sanctions against the young royal.

Missouri Republican Roy Blunt, who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee and is a member of the chamber’s GOP leadership team, said on ABC's "This Week" he couldn’t detail what was disclosed to him and other lawmakers in a confidential intelligence briefing last week. But “it won't hurt here for another few days to pass” before President Donald Trump decides whether to impose sanctions against the crown prince, Blunt said — the same type of economic penalties the administration leveled Thursday against 17 other Saudi officials for Khashoggi's death.


“I think a smoking gun would certainly help, if you actually did have that specific thing that is unlikely to be out there or unlikely to be found, where someone gave a specific direction and you know that happened,” Blunt said.

“I think the ‘high confidence’ doesn't mean that you actually have what you need, if that's the term that the CIA is using. I’m not talking about what we heard this week, but talking about just what we often read in the paper this morning,” Blunt added.

“If that is accurate, it means that we don't quite have all the information we’d like to have yet.”

Khashoggi was slain at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, on Oct. 2 when he went to secure documents needed for his planned marriage.

Trump was briefed Saturday by CIA Director Gina Haspel on the details surrounding Khashoggi’s death, following reports by the Washington Post and several other media outlets that the agency had concluded the crown prince ordered the assassination.

"They haven’t assessed anything yet. It’s too early,” the president told reporters when asked about the crown prince’s involvement Saturday. Trump said his administration will produce “a very full report over the next two days, probably Monday or Tuesday” that will convey what members of the intelligence community "think the overall impact was, and who caused it, and who did it.”

In an interview released Sunday, the president again said he did not know whether the crown prince lied about his involvement in Khashoggi’s murder.

"I don’t know," Trump told Chris Wallace on "Fox News Sunday." "Who could really know? But I can say this, he’s got many people now that say he had no knowledge."

And although the president praised Saudi Arabia this weekend as “a truly spectacular ally” and continued to tout Riyadh’s financial ties to the U.S., Blunt said Sunday that “the economy is not a reason to worry about” America’s relationship with the Middle Eastern kingdom, and should not stand in the way of justice for Khashoggi's killers.

