Bob Casey’s Senate campaign in Pennsylvania says it will not renew an ad that prompted a complaint from the widow of a U.S.-based journalist who was killed inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.
The campaign said in a statement Friday that it sympathizes with Jamal Khashoggi’s widow but does not plan to withdraw immediately. The announcementwhich uses the journalist’s image to criticize opponent Dave McCormick for his ties to the Saudi government.
Campaign spokeswoman Maddy McDaniel said the ad, which his widow said was insensitive, would run next week as planned.
“There is no question that David McCormick required his hedge fund to show support and loyalty to Khashoggi’s killers, all to protect his own business interests,” spokesman McDaniel said. “We have the utmost compassion for what Ms. Khashoggi has experienced.”
He said the campaign spoke to the widow, Hanan Elatr Khashoggi, who says the ad is insensitive and incorrectly identifies her late husband as an American.
“The announcement is a very painful reminder of how my husband died and as you can imagine, I have been traumatized every day for the past six years,” Hanan Elatr Khashoggi said in an email to Casey’s Senate office obtained by POLITICO. “I take no position on the politics of his Senate campaign, but I am dedicated to correcting misconceptions about my late husband.”
Jamal Khashoggi, who had written columns critical of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for The Washington Post, was killed by Saudi government officials inside the consulate, an incident that caused a serious rift in relations between the United States and its longtime ally.
U.S. intelligence officials later determined that the killing had been authorized by Prince Mohammed, the kingdom’s de facto ruler.
In the ad, Casey’s campaign alleges that McCormick, a wealthy Republican businessman, “demanded that his hedge fund remain loyal to the assassins to protect his investments” in Saudi Arabia.
The widow objected to the characterization of her husband as an American, since he was a Saudi citizen living in the United States, or to any mention of him at all and discussed the issue with the campaign along with her lawyer, Randa Fahmy, a donor and self-described McCormick’s “good friend.”