pompeo or any other u.s. official any audio recording. i have eve heard no tape, i ve seen no transcript. the network that reported that ought to pull down the headline that says i have. we should be factual when we report things about this, it s a very serious matter we re working diligently on. to put up headlines that are factually false, does no one any good. bret: secretary of state pompeo talking about the abc report that heed had heard this audio of khashoggi s death. and of a transcript. he says that s false. as the breaking news the saudis saying he was killed in the con sow lat, 18 people have been consulate, 18 people arrested, two people, deputy intelligence director and advisor to the crown prince have been fired by royal court and king salman. let s bring in the panel. jason riley, wall street
bret: this is a fox news alert, looking live at the white house, we are awaiting, soon, a statement pr the white house on this saudi announcement, yes, jamal khashoggi was killed in their consulate in istanbul, 18 people, saudis arrested. two senior officials fired. and their investigation, they say, is continuing. waiting for more details. meantime, reaction is starting to file in from capitol hill. ted lue, democrat from california, on the house foreign affairs committee, said this. quote, i m pleased that saudi arabia has finally realized that when you cut up a human being into the pieces they will, in fact, be dead. it s outrageous president trump continues to defend saudi arabia. clearly the crown prince it s they are implicated in that or responsible. it is his government and he has a lot of explaining to do. just some of the early reaction. we ll likely hear more coming hours including that statement from the white house. we re back with the panel. a.b., of the options that th
son-in-law, this will all blow over, he might say we re working on smaning to the saudis how serious what they re doing in yemen is. find another means by which to sort of take action, hold them accountable. but i think he s going t. do everything he can to resist this. bret: part of the conflicting position we don t know where the body is. were do you have a guy go 15 people with a bone saw. and that is reported. is that plausible? we know that the crown prince has been pushing reforms. that khashoggi opposed. he made no secret off posing them. very strongly. we know the crown prince wanted this guy out of the way. i think it s hard to believe that his hands are clean in this regard. one thing that trump cannot do is go with the rogue theory. a lot of times he likes to go with some call him, critics call him conspiracy theories. but he has to be careful not to get out and start reading, maybe
with it. muhammad bin salman knew nothing about it, that s the line i m hearing from saudi arabia. it was an accident, it was a fight between khashoggi and these 18 15 individuals in the consulate. big breaking news, trying to get more details as they come. certainly a restructuring of the saudi intelligence services and the question why were 15 of them there to question him, what did the crown prince know, if anything, a lot more to come, where is the body. bret: that is a wig one, i don t see any a big one, i don t see any writeup about where the body is. nor addressing of the turkish officials who have been talking to reporters on the ground about a bone saw being used and the body being chopped up and put in different places. the saudis don t address where khashoggi is now, if he died in the consulate. no, and i there will be an element of deniability, saying they didn t know it was taking place and presumably the
consulate between these people and khashoggi and that led to his death. they are still claiming it was an accident. on top of that we re learning two much-higher ranking officials have beened and are under arrest. one of them, general asiri, vice president of the intelligence service, spokesman for the saudi-led war in yemen, educated, trained in the u.s. and the uk. he has now fallen, as has another minister. we re also gathering that the king of saudi arabia, king salman, reached out to president erdogan, told him the state of the investigation to thank him for his ongoing patience and to say the relationship between the two countries was still strong. now, they re already talking saudi arabia about a total restructuring of the intelligence services. a lot much unanswered questions but here is saudi arabia putting up its version of events. 18 arrested, quite high level, but firm denials of the saudi royals having anything to do