Updated 11:22am

President Trump on Tuesday called the killing of Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi the “worst cover-up ever” and that those responsible “should be in big trouble.”

“It was carried out poorly and the cover-up was one of the worst cover-ups in the history of cover-ups,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “In terms of what we ultimately do, I’m going to leave it very much — in conjunction with me — I’m going to leave it up to Congress.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the U.S. has revoked the visas of 21 Saudi officials suspected of being involved in Khashoggi’s death.

They are also considering slapping human rights violator sanctions on Saudi Arabia, an idea proposed by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“These penalties will not be the last word on this matter from the United States,” Pompeo said. “We’re making very clear that the United States does not tolerate this kind of ruthless action to silence Mr. Khashoggi, a journalist, through violence.”

Khashoggi, 59, disappeared October 2 after he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to verify divorce paperwork so he could marry his fiance. Turkish officials said that once inside, a team of killers dispatched by the Saudi government kidnapped, tortured, and dismembered him.

The Washington Post columnist had been living in voluntary exile in the U.S. before his death. A former advisor to Saudi intelligence, he had become outspoken against Saudi leadership and the royal family.

“Of course they’d like to see me out of the picture,” he said in August, explaining that he believed the Saudi government wanted him dead.

Saudi Arabia originally said it did not know anything about the disappearance but later revised their story to say that Khashoggi was killed when a fight broke out between the journalist and Saudis inside the consulate.

On Wednesday, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman called the killing a “heinous crime that cannot be justified.”

Trump at first appeared to accept the country’s explanation, but the White House’s sterner comments on the murder come after Turkey’s president condemned the incident as a “savage” plot.

“It is clear that this savage murder did not happen at the drop of a dime but was a planned affair,” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Tuesday.