Why should the U.S. expend time and money to investigate the murder of a foreign national by other (allegedly) foreign nationals in a foreign nation where the U.S. doesn’t have jurisdiction, authority, the power to subpoena, or use any of the tools of law enforcement? This smells like the U.N. just ribbing the U.S. for their own political purposes.

Donald Trump has dismissed a United Nations request for the FBI to investigate the murder of the dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, suggesting it would jeopardise American weapons sales to Saudi Arabia.

But Trump brushed the proposal aside in an interview broadcast by NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday.

Asked if he would allow the FBI to investigate, Trump said: “I think it’s been heavily investigated.”

Asked who had investigated, the president replied: “By everybody. I mean … I’ve seen so many different reports.”

Khashoggi, 59, was a US resident who wrote for the Washington Post. He was killed and dismembered after he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October last year, seeking paperwork he needed in order to marry.