Washington – The Republican-led House Foreign Affairs Committee is expected to recommend Tuesday that Secretary of State Antony Blinken be held in contempt of Congress amid a dispute over top diplomat testimony about the chaotic U.S. withdrawal. Afghanistan.
Chairman of the committee, Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, subpoenaed Blinken earlier this month for a hearing, threatening to be held in contempt if he does not appear before the panel on September 19. In the letter subpoenaing Blinken, McCaul said that Blinken appeared. important as the committee considers “potential legislation aimed at helping to prevent catastrophic mistakes from withdrawal.”
The State Department said it had proposed another date for Blinken’s testimony, citing travel overseas as the US tries to secure a cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas. It also offered Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell to appear before the committee if the panel was set on a date last week.
“We continue to not understand why the committee chose to take this step,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said on Sept. 17, calling the markup an “unnecessary and counterproductive step.”
Miller noted that Blinken has answered questions about Afghanistan in 14 appearances before Congress, including the four times he testified before the McCaul committee.
Committee spokeswoman Emily Cassil pushed back in a statement accusing the State Department of continuing to engage in “confusion and direct avoidance.”
McCaul delayed the panel’s meeting by five days and issued another subpoena for Blinken to appear later.
“If Secretary Blinken fails to appear, the chairman will proceed instead with the full committee of the markup of the report recommending the US House of Representatives to find Secretary Blinken in contempt of Congress for violation should be issued a subpoena,” the notice said.
Although Blinken is in the U.S., he is attending the U.N. General Assembly in New York City and meeting with world leaders, Miller said last week.
“Once again, they chose a date unilaterally,” Miller said, adding that the committee was ahead of Blinken’s schedule. “It does not appear that he acted in good faith.”
Starting next week, Congress is scheduled to be in recess until October, providing limited days for Blinken to testify unless committee members return to Washington on recess.
Even if the measure makes it out of committee, the full House must still vote to refer it to the Justice Department for prosecution, and it is unlikely that Blinken will be prosecuted by the Biden administration.
Committee Republicans in the majority released a report earlier this month that detailed the panel’s years-long investigation into the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 and accused the Biden administration of misleading the public about the withdrawal.
A lengthy report has been highly critical of President Biden’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan, accusing the president and his administration of ignoring repeated warnings from military officials, national security advisers and US allies about the risks associated with withdrawing American forces to zero because they “prioritized. politics and his personal legacy in the interests of America’s national security.”
Thirteen US service members were killed in a suicide bombing in Kabul during the evacuation.
“This was one of the deadliest days in Afghanistan. It could have been prevented if the State Department had done its job under the law and implemented an evacuation plan,” McCaul said in September 8 interview in “Face the Nation.”
During its investigation, the committee conducted 18 transcribed interviews with Biden administration officials and received more than 20,000 pages of documents from the State Department, some obtained through subpoenas. Blinken was not among those who testified.
Democratic members of the Foreign Affairs Committee produced their own report defending the Biden administration’s withdrawal in a rapidly changing situation. Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, the top Democrat on the committee, argued that the majority of Republicans took “a certain heat to avoid the reality involving former President Donald Trump.”
The Trump administration struck a deal with the Taliban to withdraw US troops from the country by May 2021. The deal, known as the Doha Agreement, lays out several conditions that the Taliban must meet before US troops withdraw from Afghanistan.
Last year, the State Department released it partially declassified report who blamed the Trump and Biden administrations for their “inadequate” plans for the withdrawal.
