The House Foreign Affairs Committee subpoenaed Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday over his refusal to provide testimony related to the Harris-Biden administration’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The committee, led by Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas), has given Blinken a Sept. 19 deadline to answer questions before the panel or face being held in contempt of Congress.
“As Secretary of State throughout the withdrawal and [non-combatant evacuation operation], you were entrusted to lead these efforts and to secure the safe evacuation of Americans and Afghan allies,” McCaul wrote in a letter to the Harris-Biden administration official, explaining why his testimony is of great importance to House investigators.
“In testimony before the Committee, current and former State Department officials have confirmed that you served as the final decisionmaker for the Department on the withdrawal and evacuation,” the Texas Republican added. “You are therefore in a position to inform the Committee’s consideration of potential legislation aimed at helping prevent the catastrophic mistakes of the withdrawal, including potential reforms to the Department’s legislative authorization.”
McCaul has pushed for Blinken to voluntarily come before the panel since May.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller defended Blinken’s refusal to testify, arguing that the Cabinet official has appeared more than a dozen times before Congress and is unavailable to come in on the dates suggested by the committee.
“This includes four times directly before Chairman McCaul’s Committee, including a previous hearing that focused exclusively on Afghanistan, all while the Department has provided the Committee with nearly 20,000 pages of Department records, multiple high-level briefings, and engaged on transcribed interviews on nearly 15 current and former State Department officials with the Committee,” Miller wrote in a statement to The Hill.
“It is disappointing that instead of continuing to engage with the Department in good faith, the Committee instead has issued yet another unnecessary subpoena,” he added.
McCaul previously threatened to hold Blinken in contempt in February, after the State Department refused to turn over subpoenaed documents related to the botched US withdrawal from Afghanistan. The State Department produced the documents the following month.
The congressman also warned of contempt proceedings last year, when Blinken withheld a “dissent cable” from the committee that reportedly showed diplomats had warned of the risks of the US troop withdrawal from the Middle Eastern nation.
McCaul paused that contempt effort in May 2023 after the State Department agreed to let the Republican chairman and Ranking Member Gregory Meeks (D-NY) see the cable “in camera” with the names of the officials who authored the messages redacted.
The State Department eventually granted all committee members access to the cable.
The committee’s subpoena comes the week after the three-year anniversary of the US exit from Afghanistan, which left thousands of American citizens and Afghan allies stranded in the country that was quickly retaken by the Taliban.
Thirteen US service members at least 170 Afghans were also killed when a ISIS-K suicide bomber detonated explosives outside the airport in Kabul amid the pandemonium of the disorderly evacuations.
McCaul revealed last week that he intends to release the findings of his committee’s three-year-long investigation into the Harris-Biden withdrawal on Sept. 9.
