The Senate delivered a stunning rebuke to the Trump administration on Wednesday, voting overwhelmingly to advance a measure yanking U.S. support for Saudi-backed forces at war in Yemen.
The 63-37 vote, in which 14 Republicans joined every Democrat in voting to move forward on the bipartisan Saudi resolution, came hours after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis failed to sway key undecided senators with an appeal to hold off lest they upset progress of nascent talks on a cease-fire in Yemen.
Pompeo and Mattis briefed all senators in a rare classified briefing ahead of the chamber’s vote on a bid to end American support for the Saudis’ side in the bloody war in Yemen. The Cabinet members’ pitch fell short for Republicans and Democrats alike who want President Donald Trump’s administration to take a harder line on Saudi Arabia after the murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, which occurred in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul and was linked to the highest levels of the government in Riyadh.
“I found their briefing today to be lacking. I found that in substance we’re not doing those things that we should be doing to appropriately balance our relationship with Saudi Arabia between our American interests and our American values,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said in a floor speech before supporting the key procedural vote on the measure.
The Senate has to take another vote, expected next week, to formally open debate on U.S. policy toward the Saudis that seeks to take further action against them for Khashoggi’s death. But even the success of Wednesday’s initial vote was a jab at the White House — which is defending the Saudis ahead of the G-20 summit that Prince Mohammad bin Salman will attend.
The White House issued a statement warning of a possible Trump veto if the resolution were to pass, stating that it “would harm bilateral relationships in the region and negatively impact the ability of the United States to prevent the spread of violent extremist organizations.”
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a usual Trump ally who has repeatedly pressed for a stronger response to the Saudis, predicted after Mattis and Pompeo’s briefing that there was a “very good chance” of the chamber advancing the resolution yanking U.S. support for the Yemen war.
Wednesday’s vote gives the Trump administration some room to regroup after multiple senators raised concerns that CIA Director Gina Haspel was not sent to the Senate with Mattis and Pompeo, given that the CIA has reportedly confirmed the crown prince’s involvement.
But if the resolution on Yemen takes another step forward next week, it’s far from clear how the Senate debate would go. Corker described the hypothetical next step as “Wild West.”
“What I hope is going to happen is that the administration themselves will figure out a way to address this issue,” he added after the vote.
Mattis told senators that yanking American support for the Saudi-led forces would be “misguided on the eve of the promising initial negotiations,” according to his unclassified remarks, while Pompeo told reporters that passing the resolution would “undermine” the discussions.
However, any Senate vote to debate the resolution is likely to prove deeply symbolic despite the slim chance of the House taking it up. And Pompeo’s avowal that no “direct reporting” exists to tie Khashoggi’s murder to Prince Salman left some senators cold.
Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) told reporters that hearing directly from Haspel would have been “helpful” and declined to say where he stands on the resolution, though he indicated that her absence was swaying some colleagues’ votes. “Saudi Arabia continues to remain an important and key ally that has a lot of answers that they have not yet given to the U.S.”
Corker warned reporters that the lack of a more direct Trump administration punishment for the crown prince’s role in Khashoggi’s death was hurting its own cause on Capitol Hill: “[T]he fact that he hasn’t come clean, the fact that we haven’t forced him to come clean, is creating a problem. And Congress … imperfectly, as we always do, is likely to respond to this.”
One of Lee and Paul’s chief Democratic allies in taking on the Saudi regime, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), expressed confidence after the briefing but still declined to predict that the group would have the votes to advance the resolution on Wednesday.
Murphy told reporters that he would be open to talks with GOP leaders on a path forward that would allow the chamber to debate what Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has described as “the appropriate response” to Saudi Arabia.
That sort of alternative proposal “would be a good idea” to discuss, said Sen. hris Coons (D-Del.), who’s expected to support taking up the resolution after voting against a debate in March.
The prospect for another forum to tackle U.S.-Saudi relations “will shape a number of senators’ decisions,” Coons added in an interview. “If it seems that the [Sanders-Lee-Murphy] resolution is the only option to send a strong signal to our allies in the Saudi kingdom, it will likely pass.”
The final vote count on Wednesday was short of the two-thirds majority that would be needed to override a Trump veto, and included nine more Republicans in addition to the five who supported this year’s earlier procedural vote on a similar measure: Sens. Todd Young of Indiana, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Jeff Flake of Arizona, Rob Portman of Ohio, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Corker.
Marianne LeVine contributed to this report.
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