Bob Casey’s Pennsylvania Senate campaign says it will not renew an ad that complained from the widow of an American journalist who was killed in 2018 at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
The campaign said in a statement on Friday that it sympathizes with Jamal Khashoggi’s widow, but does not plan to withdraw it immediately. the adwhich uses the journalist’s image to criticize Dave McCormick for his ties to the Saudi government.
Campaign spokeswoman Maddy McDaniel said the ad, which the widow says is insensitive, is scheduled to be aired next week.
It is undisputed that David McCormick demanded that his hedge fund show support and loyalty to Mr. Khashoggi’s killers in order to protect his own business interests,” spokeswoman McDaniel said. “We have our deepest sympathies for what Mrs. Khashoggi has gone through.”
He said the campaign had spoken to Khashoggi’s widow, Hanan Elatr, who said the ad was insensitive and misidentified her late husband as an American.
“The ad is a very painful reminder of how my husband died, and as you can imagine, it has traumatized me every day for the past 6 years,” Hanan Elatr Khashoggi said in an email to Casey’s Senate office, obtained by POLITICO. “I take no position on the politics of your Senate race, but I am committed to correcting misconceptions about my late husband.”
Jamal Khashoggi, who wrote columns critical of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for The Washington Post, was killed by Saudi Arabian government officials inside the consulate, an incident that caused a serious rift between the United States and its longtime ally. .
U.S. intelligence officials later determined that the killing was authorized by Prince Mohammed, the kingdom’s de facto ruler.
In the ad, the Casey campaign claims McCormick, a wealthy Republican businessman, “demanded his hedge fund remain loyal to the killers to protect their investments” in Saudi Arabia.
The widow objected to her husband being classified as an American because he is a Saudi citizen who lived in the United States, or mentions it at all, and discussed the issue with her lawyer, Randa Fahmy, who was a donor to the campaign. described himself McCormick’s “good friend”.
