Like most things, the US intelligence community were probably deeply involved in this business, from the start.
Its of course impossible to verify, but if Khashoggi was a "journalist" for Washington Post - to me, its a sign he connected to some three-letter IC agency in Washington (not to mention his connections to UAE)
Maybe MBS threatened to make it all public. Anyway, I suspect now maybe DC insiders want this case to go away.
Agreed.