The residence, about 500 yards from the consulate, is considered another key site in the probe. Several diplomatic cars were seen leaving the consulate for the house about an hour after Khashoggi stepped through the consulate’s doors. Security cameras on the surrounding streets did not see him leave by foot, Turkish officials say.
Turkey’s private DHA news agency reported that police wanted to inspect a “water well” in the garden of the residence. The news agency did not cite a source, and the report could not be independently verified.
After his meeting with Pompeo, Turkey’s foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, mocked the Saudi denials. He noted how the Saudi consul general opened a cupboard for a team from the Reuters news agency earlier this month “as if to say, ‘See, he isn’t here.’ ”
“Acting disrespectfully is not the correct approach,” Cavusoglu said.
Pompeo’s meetings in Turkey’s capital, Ankara, were in sharp contrast to his talks a day earlier in Riyadh, where Saudi leaders repeated their denials that they had knowledge of Khashoggi’s fate after he entered the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul earlier this month.
Before leaving Riyadh, Pompeo told reporters that Saudi officials pledged they would hold any wrongdoers accountable, no matter how high their positions.
“They promised accountability for each of those persons whom they determine as a result of their investigation deserves accountability,” he said. Asked whether that includes members of the royal family, Pompeo added, “They made no exceptions to who they would hold accountable.”
Asked in a television interview that aired Wednesday about reports that Khashoggi was the victim of an interrogation gone wrong, Ryan said that would be “really disturbing.”
“If this is the case, it’s atrocious, and we have laws for this,” Ryan said on “CBS This Morning,” raising the possibility that Saudi Arabia could face U.S. sanctions.
“So I think these are the kinds of things that we’ll be looking at in Congress,” he said. “I’ve got to say, this was supposed to be a new Saudi government that was going to be reforming, opening up, transparency, moderating Islam, and to see something like this could be a real setback.”
“I can’t imagine there will be no response” to Khashoggi’s death, McConnell said.
There are also hints of possible clash in Congress.
A group of 11 Democratic senators issued a letter Wednesday to Trump and the Trump Organization seeking a full accounting of any financial ties between the company and Saudi Arabia.
Trump denies any personal financial ties to Saudi Arabia, but his business empire had several high-profile dealings with the kingdom in the past.
In the 1990s, as Trump’s business empire was stumbling, he secured cash infusions from deals with Saudi officials. He sold a yacht for $20 million to Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. Trump sold a stake in the Plaza Hotel to the prince a few years later. In 2001, he sold a floor of Trump World Tower, near the United Nations in New York, to the Saudi government for $4.5 million.
Morris and Fahim reported from Istanbul. John Wagner, Amber Phillips and Brian Murphy in Washington and Philip Bump in New York contributed to this report.
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