Since journalist Jamal Khashoggi entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2 and was never seen again, compelling evidence has emerged that the Saudi Arabian government killed him, the most compelling piece of which might be that said government has appeared to admit as much. At this point, the only thing left for the kingdom to admit is that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the hit, considering experts say it’s highly unlikely an operation like this would have gone down without the de-facto ruler’s knowledge. (He also happens to be linked to at least 5 of the 15 people said to be involved in Khashoggi’s killing and dismemberment by bone saw.) Thus far, the government has forcefully denied that M.B.S. had any advance knowledge of the plan, but on Monday, strong evidence emerged indicating that may not be the case:

Shortly after the journalist Jamal Khashoggi was assassinated last month, a member of the kill team instructed a superior over the phone to “tell your boss,” believed to be Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, that the operatives had carried out their mission, according to three people familiar with a recording of Mr. Khashoggi’s killing collected by Turkish intelligence.

The recording, shared last month with the C.I.A. director, Gina Haspel, is seen by intelligence officials as some of the strongest evidence linking Prince Mohammed to the killing of Mr. Khashoggi, a Virginia resident and Washington Post columnist whose death prompted an international outcry.

While the prince was not mentioned by name, American intelligence officials believe “your boss” was a reference to Prince Mohammed. Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, one of 15 Saudis dispatched to Istanbul to confront Mr. Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate there, made the phone call and spoke in Arabic, the people said.

At this point, most people reserving judgment about bin Salman’s involvement in the killing—of which there are few!—would probably be comfortable informing the prince that he had a good run with the denials, but the jig is up, particularly given that words to the effect of “the deed [is] done” were also uttered on the call, which Turkish officials believed was placed to one of the prince’s aides. But apparently, the Trump administration is not ready to do that!

John R. Bolton, the White House national-security adviser, said that while he had not listened to the tape, he had been told it did not directly implicate Prince Mohammed. “That’s not the conclusion that I think the people who heard it have come to,” Mr. Bolton told reporters on Wednesday at a briefing in Singapore.

Meanwhile, that’s the conclusion literally everyone else has come to. While Turkish officials have said the audio does not conclusively implicate bin Salman, former and current intelligence officials who spoke with The New York Times say there will probably never be evidence that does exactly that, noting that “it is rare that all of the pieces of a complex puzzle like Mr. Khashoggi’s killing would ever be available.” “A phone call like that is about as close to a smoking gun as you are going to get,” Bruce O. Riedel, a former C.I.A. officer now at the Brookings Institution, told the Times. “It is pretty incriminating evidence.” But of course, as representative Adam Schiff, who’s expected to take over as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, pointed out, the Trump administration has a vested interest in being able to claim their close, personal pal knew nothing. “The Trump family and the president have built up such an overwhelming reliance on the crown prince,” he told the Times. “The relationship is now, in their view, too big to fail.”