President Trump finally acknowledged on Thursday what had been evident for some time: that Jamal Khashoggi had been killed, that senior Saudi officials had played a central role in his death and that the White House faced one of its most serious foreign policy crises yet. “This is bad, bad stuff, and the consequences should be severe,” Mr. Trump said.

That much is right, and the president should be commended for abandoning his credulous repetitions of the denials of Saudi Arabia and its leaders. His next job must be to ensure that the consequences are, indeed, appropriate to the brutal murder of a self-exiled Saudi journalist living in Virginia whose only fault was to criticize the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.

Evidence leaked by senior Turkish officials, and presumably shared with American intelligence agencies, overwhelmingly indicates that Mr. Khashoggi was the victim of an elaborate assassination. A team of 15 Saudi agents, including the head of forensic evidence at the Saudi General Security Department wielding a bone saw and members of Prince Mohammed's personal guard, was flown to Istanbul to deal with him. As soon as Mr. Khashoggi entered the Saudi Consulate on Oct. 2, they subjected him to torture and dismembered him. Turkish sources said the forensic expert put on earphones, saying he listened to music when he worked, and urged others to do likewise. It’s hard to imagine that so fraught a mission would be approved by anyone less than Prince Mohammed.

Yet Mr. Trump still seemed unprepared to point a finger at the de facto Saudi ruler who had become a close ally of the president and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. It’s “a little bit early” to draw such conclusions, Mr. Trump told reporters from The Times on Thursday, suggesting that the time would most likely come.