The U.S. Senate could a take a historic step toward overriding the Trump administration by withdrawing some military support from Saudi Arabia as early as Monday, but Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colorado, hopes an alternative comes together before that.

“This is a country in a critical part of the region that has played a key role in our work protecting Israel,” Gardner told The Denver Post. “The right question is, how do we protect the innocent people of Saudi Arabia while going after the people responsible for this horrific, heinous murder?”

The murder Gardner referred to is the killing of a journalist named Jamal Khashoggi, who walked into the Saudi consulate in Turkey one day in early October to get documents for a marriage license and never walked out. The CIA and its equivalent in Turkey both concluded that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is responsible for Khashoggi’s murder and likely dismemberment.

“This is a prime example of a human rights violation,” Gardner said.

Gardner’s critics in the Colorado Democratic Party, however, say that’s a reversal from what he told KDMT radio host Jimmy Sengenberger on Nov. 29.

“Well, I would be careful of what the CIA is being accused of saying,” Gardner told Sengenberger then. “And I think that was clear in a briefing yesterday. I can’t get into the details of it, but I would just be very careful about what the CIA does and doesn’t believe.”

Gardner has never been briefed by the CIA about Khashoggi’s murder, and he told The Denver Post that’s what he tried to say when he talked with Sengenberger. There’s no text message, email or “smoking gun” that directly links the prince to the crime, but Gardner said all the evidence he’s seen points to Mohammed bin Salman.

The Yuma Republican wants to levy sanctions against the crown prince as well as anyone who helped him carry out the plan.

“We can deny their passports, deny their visas. And if you do that here, it triggers a whole other series of countries that deny them as well,” Gardner said. “We freeze their bank assets. You can imagine what it would be if all of a sudden the crown prince can’t get a credit card anywhere because we have taken those actions. We don’t allow them to invest here anymore.”

Gardner, who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, went so far as to say he could support sanctions against the country of Saudi Arabia if it failed to punish the prince, but “we have to recognize we can’t do anything that would empower ISIS, Al-Qaeda or Iran.”

He thinks could happen if Sens. Mike Lee, R-Utah, Chris Murphy, D-Connecticut, and Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, pass their bill. It would use the War Powers Act of 1973 to end U.S. involvement in the war between Saudi Arabia and a Yemeni ethnic group called the Houthis. In late November, the Senate voted 63-37 to advance that proposal for floor debate.

“The situation in Yemen now is the worst humanitarian disaster in the world,” Sanders said in a statement following the November vote. “Eighty-five thousand children have already starved to death and millions more are on the brink of starvation. All of which was caused by Saudi intervention in the civil war in Yemen.”

Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colorado, voted yes, while Gardner voted no.

Administration officials, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, have continued to assert that the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, security in the region and an ongoing attempt to negotiate a ceasefire “would be a hell of a lot worse” if Congress withdraws the U.S. military.

Gardner agreed, saying, “We know for a fact that the Houthis that are in Europe right now negotiating would have walked away from this negotiation had the U.S. empowered them by doing what Bernie Sanders wanted.”

If the November resolution passes without any changes, it will be the first time Congress has invoked the War Powers Act to end military operations in a foreign country.