White House plans dinner for Saudi prince scrutinized in journalist’s killing

President Donald Trump is planning a formal dinner for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman during his trip to Washington, a high-profile honor for a man the U.S. intelligence community concluded approved the killing and dismemberment of a Washington Post opinion columnist.

The black-tie dinner, which an administration official said is set to take place in the East Room on Tuesday, will have all the trappings of a state visit and wrap a packed day of programming at the White House surrounding Mohammed’s trip, including a meeting with Trump. Members of Congress, administration officials and U.S. business leaders have been invited, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an event that had not yet been announced.

The trip is the first visit to the U.S. for Mohammed since the 2018 murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a contributing columnist to The Post and outspoken critic of the Saudi government. Trump in his first term shielded Mohammed from scrutiny after the CIA concluded that he ordered Khashoggi’s assassination. The president and some of his family members also have business ties to Mohammed and Saudi Arabia.

The president moved quickly to bolster the U.S.’s partnership with the crown prince after his return to office, embracing Mohammed and Saudi Arabia as central to his efforts to reset relations with Russia and stabilize the Middle East.

The open celebration of Mohammed by a U.S. president marks a dramatic step in the public rehabilitation of a man once condemned as a pariah and highlights Trump’s transactional approach to advancing American interests even when they potentially conflict with American values. He has been quick to tout Saudi investment into the U.S. economy, saying it is part of his second-term promise to spark an American resurgence.

In addition to members of Congress, high-profile business executives are among those on the guest list for Tuesday night’s White House dinner, the official said. They declined to elaborate. Mohammed is slated to hold a U.S.-Saudi investment meeting at the Kennedy Center on Wednesday as part of his visit, which will include panel discussions and roundtables on topics such as biotechnology, defense and green technology.

Trump met with Mohammed in one of the first foreign visits of his second term. In Riyadh, he signed a strategic economic partnership agreement, which includes deals for mining, energy and defense. Trump signed a $142 billion weapons deal with Saudi Arabia, and Mohammed has pledged to invest $600 billion in the U.S., although analysts caution that some of those promises may be overstated.

The White House and Riyadh plan to make announcements about additional areas of cooperation next week, though details are still being hammered out, according to a senior White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk about incomplete plans. Riyadh has expressed interest in purchasing F-35 fighter jets from the U.S., but officials have not committed to send them.

Trump hopes that Riyadh will normalize relations with Israel and join the Abraham Accords, one of the core foreign policy achievements of his first term that is dedicated to stabilizing relations in the Middle East by deepening trade ties with between Israel and its neighbors.

Former president Joe Biden extended this strategy with Saudi Arabia and was close to striking a deal before the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel. But Israel’s subsequent war in Gaza derailed those efforts, and now Mohammed is unlikely to agree to a broad deal with Israel unless he can achieve concrete pledges from the Israelis that they will allow the formation of a Palestinian state.

Before Trump, the Biden administration made a similar calculus about working with Mohammed. On the campaign trail after Khashoggi’s killing, Biden promised he would make Saudi Arabia “the pariah that they are.” Instead, during a Middle East trip in 2022, Biden fist-bumped Mohammed and gave him a sitting audience with the leader of the free world.

Trump’s ties to Saudi Arabia go beyond U.S. interests. The Trump Organization, which is led by the president’s sons, has plans for a Trump-branded property in Riyadh, the capital and largest city in Saudi Arabia, and is also working on Trump Tower Jeddah, along the coast of the Red Sea. And Mohammed is a business partner of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Kushner’s private equity firm has received billions from foreign sources, including the government of Saudi Arabia.