The Death of Self-Exiled Saudi Journalist Jamal Khashoggi Was Recorded — Here's What Happened

In November 2025, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman made a historic trip to the White House. He sat next to President Donald Trump in the Oval Office, where the two fielded questions from the press. One query directed towards the prince resulted in an angry outburst from Trump.

ABC News's Mary Bruce reminded Salman that U.S. Intelligence concluded he orchestrated the brutal 2018 killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

She went on to say that families of 9/11 victims are "furious" that he was invited to the United States, and asked how Americans can trust him. This was met with a barrage of insults from Trump.

Was Khashoggi actually a U.S. citizen, and how was he killed? Here's what we know.

At the time of his death, Khashoggi was a legal resident of the United States, but he was a Saudi citizen. According to NPR, Khashoggi's family had strong ties to Saudi Arabia. His grandfather was the doctor to King Abdul Aziz, the founder of Saudi Arabia in the 1930s, while his uncle was the weapons broker for another Saudi monarch, King Fahd.

Khashoggi was born in Medina, one of the most historically significant cities in Islamic history.

Khashoggi first came to America in order to attend Indiana State University. He graduated with a Bachelor of Business Administration in 1982. Ali al-Ahmed, a Saudi dissident who runs the Institute for Gulf Affairs in Washington, D.C., told NPR that Khashoggi's family was rich and well-educated.

Following the 9/11 attacks, Khashoggi frequently visited the United States to assure the American government that Saudi Arabia was still a trusted ally.

He was a fixture in the Saudi media for many years, but things changed in 2015 when Khashoggi was named head of a new television station in neighboring Bahrain, called Al Arab.

This is also when Salman came to power. On Khashoggi's first day, Al Arab aired an interview that was critical of the government. Salman shut down the station immediately. Khashoggi moved to McLean, Va., in 2017.

He was killed the following year.

In October 2018, Khashoggi walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, to obtain proof that he was divorced, per the BBC. He was planning on marrying his Turkish fiancée, Hatice Cengiz.

Khashoggi didn't think anything was going to happen, but he gave Cengiz two cell phones and told her to call an adviser to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan if he did not come back out. He did not return.

Per The Khashoggi Murder Tapes documentary, Khashoggi was met by a reception committee who told him there was an Interpol warrant out for his arrest. In the recording of Khashoggi's murder, you can hear his voice go from confident to anxious and finally to terrified.

He repeatedly asks, "How could this happen in an embassy?" In 30 minutes, Khashoggi was suffocated and then dismembered, all of which was recorded. The journalist's body was never found.