In perhaps his most daunting reaction to the disappearance of Saudi journalist and Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi, US President Donald Trump on Saturday warned that his administration would inflict “severe punishment” on Saudi Arabia if the kingdom was found to have played a part in Khashoggi’s disappearance.

Jamal Khashoggi went missing after he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2 to obtain official documents for his upcoming marriage.

Trump said he would be “very upset and angry if that were the case”, but ruled out halting big military contracts. He made the remarks in an interview on the CBS show “60 Minutes”.

“… if true, the fact that a journalist was murdered was terrible and disgusting… We’re going to get to the bottom of it and there will be severe punishment.”

He said there were “other ways of punishing” than cancelling military contracts, which powers like Russia and China were interested in.

“I don’t want to hurt jobs, I don’t want to lose an order like that.”

“There’s a lot at stake,” Trump said, adding that “maybe especially so because this man was a reporter.”

Saudi journalist Khashoggi was a permanent resident of the US and in self-imposed exile. He penned a column in the Post and was a fierce critic of Riyadh’s human rights violations and of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s policies.

Turkish media widely reported that Khashoggi was feared by officials to have been murdered and dismembered inside the Saudi consulate building by a Saudi hit squad, who may have removed the mutilated corpse in the consulate’s diplomatic pouch, which is protected by international law from being searched by authorities.

Saudi Arabia dismissed allegations that it ordered his killing as “lies”.

Saudi Interior Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Saud Naif bin Abdulaziz condemned and dismissed reports that the journalist was murdered as “lies and baseless allegations”, the state-run Saudi Press Agency said.

Turkey and the United States on Thursday ratcheted up the pressure on Saudi Arabia to explain how Khashoggi vanished after entering its Istanbul consulate last week with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan urging the release of CCTV footage from the mission.

(With agency inputs)