Donald Trump Jr., the eldest son of the current US President, has retweeted a post which claimed that missing Saudi journalist and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi was linked to terrorists.
The move came after correspondent Patrick Poole from the US news website PJ Media claimed on his Twitter page that Khashoggi was "the author of this notorious 1988 Arab News article of him tooling around Afghanistan with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda co-founder Abdullah Azzam."
I didn’t realize until yesterday that Jamal Khashoggi was the author of this notorious 1988 Arab News article of him tooling around Afghanistan with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda co-founder Abdullah Azzam. He’s just a democrat reformer journalist holding a RPG with jihadists. pic.twitter.com/G7xTCjwiPx
— Patrick Poole (@pspoole) 12 октября 2018 г.
Sean Davis, founder of the conservative political website The Federalist, shared Poole's tweet on Khashoggi, arguing that a public stance on the missing Saudi journalist is like other "evidence-free narratives." Davis's tweet, in turn, was reposted by Donald Trump Jr. from his public Twitter account.
Junior endorsing the idea that maybe Khashoggi deserved to be murdered by his government? pic.twitter.com/Ty5YPEmELU
— Sam Adler-Bell (@SamAdlerBell) 12 октября 2018 г.
This came after Saudi Interior Minister Abdulaziz bin Saud bin Nayef slammed allegations by Turkish investigators regarding the death of Khashoggi as "lies," stressing that the accusations of murder were underscored by attempts to target the Saudi government.
In another development, President Donald Trump told CBS that the US "is going to get to the bottom of of Khashoggi's disappearance." Trump warned that Saudi authorities are behind all this, the US would inflict "severe punishment" on them.
READ MORE: Journalist Disappearance Row: Companies, Media Pull Out of Saudi-Sponsored Event
The US President added that Riyadh is vehemently denying the accusations and that he is unwilling to hurt US jobs by halting over $100 billion in military sales to Saudi Arabia at this point.
Earlier, Trump pledged to call Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud in connection with Khashoggi's disappearance which he said is a serious problem that will prompt Washington to look "very hard" to get answers.
The Turkish Foreign Ministry, for its part, reported that Saudi Arabia has authorized Turkish officials to access the consulate building in relation to the disappearance.
Khashoggi has been missing since October 2, when he visited the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, to obtain documents needed for his upcoming marriage.
