Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump's senior adviser Jared Kushner met with Saudi Arabia's crown prince Tuesday in their first face-to-face encounter since the October 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who sources have told CNN the CIA assesses with high confidence ordered Khashoggi's murder , met Kushner along with his father King Salman to discuss US-Saudi cooperation, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and economic investment in the region according to a readout of the meeting released by the White House.

The readout -- issued a day after the meeting and minutes after Trump's former attorney and fixer Michael Cohen began testifying before Congress -- does not mention Khashoggi, a columnist for the Washington Post who was lured to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in a premeditated attack.

The father of four was set upon by a team of men from bin Salman's inner circle, killed and dismembered.

The timing of the White House statement and its omissions seem designed to draw attention away from the charged issue of Khashoggi's murder. Trump's refusal to condemn Riyadh for the killing and his dismissal of the intelligence has riled Congress and infuriated even his closest allies there. It's given lawmakers a rare focus for bipartisan unity and led to unprecedented debate about the strategic value and costs of the US-Saudi alliance.