The campaign of Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey has announced that it will not renew an ad following a complaint from the widow of a U.S.-based journalist who was killed inside the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul in 2018.
The campaign said in a statement Friday that it sympathizes with Jamal Khashoggi’s widow but has no plans to withdraw anytime soon. advertisementhas used the journalist’s image to criticize his opponent, Dave McCormick, and his ties to the Saudi Arabian government.
Campaign spokeswoman Maddie McDaniel said the ad, which the widow called insensitive, will be phased out starting next week as scheduled.
“There is no dispute that David McCormick required his hedge fund to demonstrate support and loyalty to the murderers of Mr. Khashoggi in order to protect his business interests,” spokesman McDaniel said. “We have the utmost sympathy for what Mr. Khashoggi went through.”
He said the campaign spoke with Hanan Elatol Khashoggi’s widow, who said the ad was insensitive and incorrectly portrayed her late husband as American.
“This commercial is a painful reminder of how my husband died and, as you can imagine, has traumatized me daily for the past six years,” Hanan Elator Khashoggi said in an email to Senator Casey’s office obtained by Politico. “While I take no political stance on your senator campaign, I am committed to correcting misconceptions about my late husband.”
The murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist critical of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, by Saudi government agents inside the consulate has caused a deep rift in relations between the United States and its longtime allies.
U.S. intelligence later determined that the killing was approved by Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed.
In its ads, Casey’s campaign alleges that McCormick, a wealthy Republican businessman, “demanded that his hedge fund pledge allegiance to a murderer to protect its investments in Saudi Arabia.”
The widow objected to her husband being portrayed as American or to any mention of him at all because he is a Saudi Arabian national living in the United States, urging her lawyer, Randa Fahmy, a donor, Self-proclaimed A “good friend” of McCormick’s.
