DUBAI, United Arab Emirates _ Colony Capital Inc. Chief Executive Officer Tom Barrack, a longtime ally of President Donald Trump, said it's a mistake to criticize the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the journalist killed at a Saudi Arabian consulate last year.
"So whatever happened in Saudi Arabia, the atrocities in America are equal or worse to the atrocities in Saudi Arabia," Barrack said at a Milken Institute summit in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday.
"The atrocities in any autocratic country are dictated by the rule of law," he said in remarks on stage with CNN's Becky Anderson that were first reported by Gulf News. "So for us to dictate what we think is the moral code there when we have a young man and a regime that's trying to push themselves into 2030 I think is a mistake."
A spokesman for Colony said Barrack was unavailable to elaborate on his comments.
Khashoggi, an insider-turned-critic of the Saudi ruling regime, was killed and dismembered by people close to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the kingdom's Istanbul consulate after entering to pick up documents for his wedding. Saudi Arabia has said the crown prince, the kingdom's 33-year-old de facto ruler, was not aware of any plan to kill Khashoggi.
Barrack has been seeking money from sovereign wealth funds and pension plans to invest alongside Colony, a $44 billion investment business. He was chairman of Trump's inaugural committee, which disclosed raising a record-setting $107 million. The committee's donors and potential foreign connections have drawn scrutiny, leading to a federal investigation. Barrack is cooperating with the inquiry.
The Khashoggi killing sparked a crisis in U.S.-Saudi relations after Trump built his Middle East strategy around an alliance with the kingdom. Saudi Arabia was the first nation Trump visited after taking office in 2017 and he frequently boasted about U.S. weapons sales brokered during his trip.
But the murder of Khashoggi, a U.S. resident who wrote for The Washington Post, sparked outrage internationally and in Congress, where even top Republican leaders such as Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina broke with the president and pushed to sanction the kingdom. Trump and his top advisers say they want accountability for the crime, but also that they don't want to put the broader relationship with Saudi Arabia at risk.
