WASHINGTON (AP) — The State Department on Thursday slammed House Republicans over a subpoena for testimony about the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, accusing them of repeatedly requesting hearings on days when they knew Secretary of State Antony Blinken would be unavailable.
Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said he was trying to accommodate the needs of Blinken, who faces contempt of Congress if he fails to appear.
The Texas Republican had initially scheduled a hearing for Thursday, while Blinken was in Egypt and France. He then changed the date to Tuesday, when Blinken is scheduled to attend the annual U.N. General Assembly meeting of world leaders in New York and attend President Joe Biden’s speech during the hearing.
“They unilaterally picked a date when we told them in advance that he would not be in Washington, DC, because he has important meetings elsewhere to advance the interests of the United States abroad,” said State Department spokesman Matthew Miller.
He said the State Department had briefed the committee weeks in advance about Blinken’s schedule, so “it absolutely does not appear that they are acting in good faith.”
McCaul said the department was being “disingenuous” for rejecting repeated requests to pick a September date for Blinken to testify. “If we are forced to hold Secretary Blinken in contempt of Congress, he will have no one to blame but himself,” the Republican committee chairman said in a statement Thursday.
The subpoena for Blinken’s testimony is the latest in a series of moves by McCaul and other House Republicans over the past 18 months to hold the Biden administration accountable for what they have called a “staggering failure of leadership” after Taliban forces seized the Afghan capital much faster than U.S. intelligence had anticipated as U.S. troops withdrew.
Former President Donald Trump repeatedly invoked the disastrous Afghanistan exodus on the campaign trail, attempting to link it to Democratic rival Kamala Harris. Several watchdog reviews and a more than 18-month investigation by House Republicans have failed to identify a single instance in which the vice president had a specific impact on the decision-making surrounding the exodus.
Blinken has testified 14 times on Afghanistan, including four times before McCaul’s committee.
Miller said Blinken was prepared to testify again if a mutually convenient time could be agreed upon, but he noted that Congress is in recess starting late next week until after the November elections.
Earlier this month, House Republicans released a scathing report on their investigation into the withdrawal, blaming the Biden administration for the disastrous end to America’s longest war and downplaying Trump’s role.
The biased investigation chronicled the final months of military and civilian failures following Trump’s February 2020 withdrawal agreement, which allowed the Taliban to seize the country before the last U.S. officials left on Aug. 30, 2021. The chaotic withdrawal left behind scores of American citizens, Afghan allies on the battlefield, women activists and others at risk from the Taliban.
The report was hardly groundbreaking, as withdrawal has been extensively advocated by several independent assessments. Previous studies and analyses have pointed to a systemic failure during the last four presidential administrations and concluded that Biden and Trump bear the brunt of the blame.
McCaul, who led the investigation, said the GOP investigation showed the Biden administration “had the information and the ability to take the necessary steps to plan for the inevitable collapse of the Afghan government so that we could safely evacuate American personnel, American citizens, green card holders and our brave Afghan allies.”
