So far, administration officials have also expressed reluctance to canceling participation in Saudi Arabia's signature economic forum, the Future Investment Initiative. A wide array of global business leaders including World Bank President Jim Yong Kim and Virgin founder Richard Branson has pulled out of the conference later the month. At the moment Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin plans to keep his own plans to attend though Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says they're evaluating the situation closely.
U.S. lawmakers, for their part, have come out more strongly. A bipartisan group of nearly two dozen senators have called for an investigation into Khashoggi's disappearance, and some have suggested they would be willing to block the Saudi arms deal if more damaging details come to light.
"I don't think that we should continue with business as usual until we know exactly what happened here, because what we do know is this: He walked into that consulate and he never came out," Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., told CNN on Sunday. "So the only two things that could have happened is, he's alive and somehow still in there, or he's dead and the Saudis are the ones who did it. There's no other explanation for it."
And Rubio said that no U.S. government officials should be attending the Saudi conference until they get some official answers about what happened.
"No matter how important they may be to our Iranian strategy," he added, "our ability to be a voice for human rights and to go after regimes like [Syrian President Bashar] Assad, like [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, like what China does, like what [President Nicolas] Maduro does in Venezuela all of that is undermined and compromised if we are not willing to confront something as atrocious as what's allegedly happened here."