The Murder of Jamal Khashoggi is More Complicated Than We All Knew

This week marks the seventh anniversary of the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. This anniversary should also mark the day a United States Senator betrayed his oath to the Constitution. The true story of Gold Bar Bob’s Washington, D.C., is more scandalous than any Netflix series. For the first time in American history, a United States Senator was caught acting as a foreign agent. In exchange for cash, gold bars, and a new Mercedes-Benz, former Senator Bob Menendez betrayed his nation—a nation that provided his parents a safe place to give him birth on January 1, 1954, even though it was rumored his mother had considered an abortion. His family had barely escaped serious harm when they arrived in New York City around 1953. America was different back then—tougher, meaner, with fewer opportunities for non-citizens. Bob was an American citizen, though, having been born in a New York City hospital. That made him the hope of his family. He became living proof that anyone could rise in America.

Why, then, did Bob betray the nation that gave him everything when he had nothing? Why did Menendez give the Egyptian government the United States Embassy in Cairo’s roster of employees? It may seem innocuous to hand over the staff roster of an American Embassy to a foreign government. At the time, however, Egyptian officials bribing Menendez were planning to assassinate an American journalist when they requested Nadine Menendez to ask Bob for the Embassy’s staffing list. Having in their possession a definitive list of the staff gave Egypt—who were using hacking software like Pegasus—an opportunity to track every move Americans made in Cairo, ultimately leading to the infamous murder of Jamal Khashoggi.

Up until now the story of the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi was simple.  The Saudi Crown Prince Mohamad bin Salman was solely responsible. For years, MBS was depicted as the tyrant who ordered the assassination and dismemberment of a Washington Post journalist. But the true story is far more complicated and involves the machinations of a corrupt senator who received a cache of gold bars from an Egyptian-American businessman to cover up the Egyptian government’s role in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, who was killed and dismembered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October, 2018.

Robert Menendez, now serving an 11-year prison sentence for bribery and a series of other felonies, coached the Egyptian intelligence chief who was summoned to answer questions in Washington about the murder three years later while he was head of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations committee. Menendez’s role with the Egyptians in the months leading up to the murder and for years after has never been reported. Just a few months before Khashoggi was murdered Menendez released all weapons holds that had been placed on the Egyptians for decades due to human rights violations.

These new revelations are highlighted in Gold Bar Bob: The Downfall of the Most Corrupt US Senator,  the new book I co-authored with New York Post reporter Isabel Vincent. We show how Menendez acted as a mob boss from New Jersey, and played a central role in covering up one of the most horrific murders of a journalist, who had championed the Arab Spring, a series of popular uprisings that began in 2010 and spread throughout the Middle East.

Even the best assessments offered by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi have failed to show any evidence that MBS definitively ordered the murder. In the Biden administration, the ODNI report was meant to undercut the previous Trump administration’s ambiguity over the role of MBS in the murder. “We assess that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey to capture OR kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi,” the report reads.

The US intelligence community knew that Egyptian officials, who were bribing Menendez, had provided the drugs that killed Khashoggi, a columnist for the Washington Post, in the consulate. The revelation that the former senator was involved in covering up the crime came to light almost as an afterthought, in a sentencing memo at his trial earlier this year.

Menendez worked for his paymasters, the Egyptians, to facilitate their role and eventually cover it up. The world was prevented from learning about the role the Egyptians played in the murder because Menendez ran a spy operation against his fellow Senators that thwarted any chance of a serious investigation. The little we know relates to the Saudi Arabian kill squad stopping in Cairo to pick up the drugs they would use to kill Khashoggi in Istanbul. Did the Egyptians turn an abduction into a murder they could leverage through their paid Senator Bob Menendez?

Brazenly, Menendez sat squarely at odds with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other Trump administration officials, who argued that the CIA had no “smoking gun” showing MBS ordered the crime. Menendez in turn accused the Trump administration of telling the world, “you can act with impunity and ultimately have no consequences, that is a dangerous message for the United States.” And yet this is exactly what Menendez was doing, openly flouting CIA intel briefs by taking meetings, money and gifts from the Egyptians who played a major role in the crime.

Menendez played the media by receiving classified CIA briefings and turning them into Egyptian propaganda he funneled through esteemed outlets like the Washington Post, MSNBC, CNN, and the New York Times. These outlets perhaps unwittingly did a disservice to human rights groups: They’ve allowed a convicted criminal to dissuade them from covering the source of the murder weapon in the Khashoggi case to this day.

In March 2018, months before Khashoggi’s death, Menendez met in his Senate office with Egyptian Major General  Khaled Ahmed Shawky Osman and two of his now-convicted co-conspirators, New Jersey entrepreneur Wael Hana and his wife Nadine Menendez. Later, in May and July of that year, Menendez communicated again with Major General Osman, assuring him that he had successfully removed weapons bans and sanctions on Egypt. A few months later, Khashoggi was killed.

Menendez turned the murder into a political weapon. He used it to mount an all-out attack on MBS, reinforcing his claims in the press and then following up with legislative maneuvers. Menendez sponsored bills designed to place Saudi Arabia and MBS on a Magnitsky-style OFAC sanctions list. He also moved to block emergency weapons sales to the Saudis, directly opposing the Trump administration while claiming he sought to end the Saudi-led war in Yemen. Khashoggi’s death, in effect, became Menendez’s  rallying cry, allowing him to set the Egyptians up to have more influence involving the Saudi war with Yemen.

Egyptians were now in a position to sell weapons while the Saudi’s were fighting to stay off of Bob’s sanctions list. This dynamic was setting Egypt up to become a regional weapons dealer. One of those weapons deals after Menendez lifted humanitarian holds was to Russia during its attack of Ukraine. Egypt would later claim the reports were mistaken and they were never planning on selling weapons to Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

Regardless the media bought the con job without hesitation. Headlines and editorials demonized MBS and Saudi Arabia at every turn.

Corruption at the highest levels of government has real-world consequences. Menendez wielded enough power and influence to create a false narrative that turned much of the world against MBS. In effect, the globe has been trapped inside a bubble of lies—lies that Menendez was handsomely paid to create and perpetuate.

It’s time to re-examine the Khashoggi murder, and everything else Menendez did as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee while he was on the payroll of the Egyptian government. The stakes are high, not only for the balance of power in the Middle East but also for America’s credibility in how it handles intelligence, alliances, and foreign policy. A false story created for cash and gifts should not be allowed to distort global diplomacy and human rights standards any longer.

Thomas Jason Anderson is the co-author of Gold Bar Bob: The Downfall of the Most Corrupt U.S. Senator (Diversion Books/Simon & Schuster, 2025).