Over the summer, the Saudi Arabian government promised the Trump administration $100 million for the U.S.’s efforts to stabilize parts of Syria liberated from the Islamic State, a coup for Donald Trump, who regularly complains about other countries not coughing up enough money on defense. But despite the pledge, one official involved in Syria policy told The New York Times that it was unclear when, if ever, the money would actually materialize in American bank accounts. But as luck would have it, just this past Tuesday, it did—the same day Secretary of State Mike Pompeo landed in Riyadh to get some answers on the fate of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist and dissident who entered the kingdom’s consulate in Turkey on October 2 and was never seen again. Some people have dismissed the notion that the two events are connected—“The specific transfer of funds has been long in process and has nothing to do with other events or the secretary’s visit,” Brett McGurk, the U.S. envoy to the coalition fighting the Islamic State, told the Times. But others aren’t so convinced!

“The timing of this is no coincidence,” the American official working on Syria policy told the Times on Tuesday. “In all probability, the Saudis want Trump to know that his cooperation in covering for the Khashoggi affair is important to the Saudi monarch,” Joshua Landis, a professor at the University of Oklahoma, surmised to The Washington Post. “Much of its financial promises to the U.S. will be contingent on this cooperation.” Coincidentally, the $100 million hit the U.S. accounts on the same day Trump stepped up his defense of the kingdom, telling the Associated Press that what we have here is another case of “guilty until proven innocent,” which is exactly what happened with Brett Kavanaugh, who the president believes is “innocent all the way.” Trump also informed his Twitter followers that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman maintains he knows nothing about nothing, and if you can’t trust the word of the guy who imprisoned his own cousins, who can you trust?

Even as the president goes to bat for his Saudi pals, more evidence has emerged that paints a grisly picture of what actually happened to the journalist. Turkish officials have conducted their own investigation, and the findings appear to differ significantly from Trump’s rosy narrative:

Turkish officials said they shared evidence in recent days, including the details of an audio recording, with both the U.S. and Saudi Arabia to support their conclusion that Mr. Khashoggi was killed at the hand of Saudi operatives.

The recording indicates how Mr. Khashoggi was killed in the office of the Saudi consul general, Mohammad al-Otaibi, minutes after he walked into the consulate building on October 2, said people familiar with the matter. Mr. Khashoggi wasn’t interrogated, the people said. Instead, he was beaten up, drugged, and killed by Saudi operatives who had flown in from Riyadh earlier in the day, the people said.

Then, on the recording, a voice can be heard inviting the consul to leave the room, the people familiar with the matter said. The voice of a man Turkish authorities identified as Saudi forensic specialist Salah Al Tabiqi can be heard recommending other people present to listen to some music while he dismembered Mr. Khashoggi’s body, the people said.

Trump, for one, has said he’s requested to review this evidence himself—“if it exists.” Saudi Arabian officials, meanwhile, have denied all knowledge of these proceedings. But the Times reports that five of the men suspected of taking part in Khashoggi’s (alleged!) murder have ties to the crown prince. One, Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, is a former diplomat who worked at the Saudi Embassy in London in 2007 and frequently traveled with M.B.S. Three others are “linked by witnesses and other records to the Saudi crown prince’s security detail.” And the fifth is the forensic specialist who “holds senior positions in the Saudi Interior Ministry” and is “a figure of such stature that he could be directed only by a high-ranking Saudi authority.” As the Times notes, the presence of a professional who specializes in autopsies sure makes it seem like the operation “had a lethal intent from the start,” and wasn’t simply an interrogation gone wrong. Then again, maybe he—along with four other men linked to M.B.S.—just happened to stop by the embassy that day. Presumably Trump and/or Saudi Arabia will offer a compelling explanation for all this in short order.

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Ryan Zinke has a solution to his long list of ethics scandals

Fire the person investigating said scandals and replace her with an administration loyalist. No muss, no fuss:

Interior Department Secretary Ryan Zinke is replacing the department’s 10-year acting inspector general, Mary Kendall, with Suzanne Israel Tufts, who served as an assistant secretary for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, according to The Hill. . . . The move will likely raise concerns over whether Zinke will receive a fair check on his activities at the Interior Department, in part because the new position will not need Senate confirmation. When joining HUD, Tufts replaced an official that voiced concerns about HUD Secretary Ben Carson’s office redecoration that raised questions about unnecessary spending. Zinke has been the subject of a handful of internal government investigations since beginning his tenure as secretary in 2017.

Among those fourteen and counting (!) investigations is a probe into the Interior secretary’s decision to spend $139,000 on new doors, as well as one into his dealings with Halliburton chairman David Lesar, who may or may not have bribed Zinke with a microbrewery. Zinke said in a statement at the time that such a suggestion is “absurd” and that at “this point in my life, I am more interested in sampling hand crafted beers rather than making them.”

Jerome Powell should probably expect to wake up with a horse’s head in his bed

The central banker apparently plans to stick with his rate hikes, despite Donald Trump blaming them for a two-day market decline, claiming the Fed “is going loco,” and calling the independent government agency the “biggest threat” threat to his presidency:

Federal Reserve officials remain convinced that continuing to gradually increase interest rates is the best formula to preserve a steady economy, according to minutes released Wednesday of the central bank’s most recent policy meeting. . . . Ultimately, the committee unanimously voted to approve a quarter-point hike to its benchmark rate target, with members indicating that more increases are on the way. The increase took the Fed’s overnight target to a range of 2 percent to 2.25 percent.

Also during the meeting, Fed members who’d polled the business community noted that Trump’s trade policies are largely seen as a threat to economic growth: “A number of contacts cited factors that were causing them to forego production or investment opportunities in some cases, including labor shortages and uncertainty regarding trade policy,” the minutes said. “In particular, tariffs on aluminum and steel were cited as reducing new investment in the energy sector. Contacts also suggested that firms were attempting to diversify the set of countries with which they trade—both imports and exports—as a result of uncertainty over tariff policy.” Whoops.

Report: Americans hate Trump more than they like his economy

Sad! Per The Washington Post:

President Trump is a historically unpopular president presiding over a historically strong economy, a singular state of affairs scrambling expectations for Republicans three weeks ahead of the midterms. . . . Indeed, a record-high 48 percent of respondents to CNBC’s new All-America Economic Survey said they are optimistic about the economy now and for its future. Those results . . . match the findings of the latest Economic Anxiety Index, out this morning from Marketplace and Edison Research. The index is hitting an all-time low in its three-year history, with fewer respondents describing themselves as frequently or sometimes anxious about their financial situation than in any previous survey.

The Marketplace poll shows 60 percent of Americans say the economy is strong, up 7 points from earlier this year. And among that group, nearly two-thirds credit Trump, though a slightly higher number also credit the private sector. The CNBC poll found Trump earning narrow approval for his economic policies. But, tellingly, by a 21-point margin, respondents say they are concerned about his temperament.

It remains totally unclear where voters are getting the idea that Trump—who flies off the handle at the slightest provocation and called a woman “horseface” on Twitter yesterday—doesn’t have the temperament they like to see in their presidents.

Elsewhere!

Goldman Alumni Still Think They Can Fix Wall Street with Crypto (Bloomberg)

Cannabis is legal in Canada—here’s what you need to know (CBC)

Senior Treasury employee charged with leaking documents related to Russia probe (The Washington Post)

Angry management: The dark side of Santander’s new boss (Financial News)

Wall Street’s M.B.S. Grandstanding Is Just a P.R. Charade (The Hive)

Murdoch children in line for $2bn each on media breakup (Financial Times)

Colleges Are Baffled by Bitcoin Donations (W.S.J.)

The G.O.P.’s paradox: The economy is popular, but Trump is not (The Washington Post)

S.E.C. Charges Former Insurance Wunderkind with Fraud (*W.S.J.)

Eddie Lampert Is Unrepentant (W.S.J.)

Gargantuan gator resurfaces at Florida golf course (UPI)