Report: Trump Team Putting Together List of Military Officers Involved in Afghanistan Withdrawal
President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team is putting together a list of United States military officers who were involved in the Biden Administration’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, according to a recent report.
Two people familiar with the plan told NBC News that Trump’s transition team is reportedly in talks about whether to establish “a commission to investigate” the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, which left 13 American service members dead.
The commission would reportedly also gather “information about who was directly involved in the decision-making for the military,” and how the plan “was carried out,” among other things.
“They’re taking it very seriously,” one person with the plan explained to the outlet.
NBC News reported:
Officials working on the transition are considering creating a comission to investigate the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, including gathering information about who was directly involved in the decision-making for the military, how it was carried out, and whether the military leaders could be eligible for charges as serious as treason, the U.S. official and person with knowledge of the plan said.
The report from NBC News comes months after Trump honored the 13 fallen U.S. service members during a wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery. In the aftermath of Trump’s visit, NPR released an article alleging that Trump campaign officials got into a “verbal and physical altercation” with a cemetery official who was trying to prevent Trump’s campaign from filming and taking photos in Section 60 of Arlington Cemetery.
Family members of the 13 fallen U.S. service members issued statements defending Trump and criticized Vice President Kamala Harris for issuing a statement describing Trump’s visit to the cemetery as a “political stunt.”
While Harris was sharply criticized by the Gold Star families, in early September, Harris’s presidential campaign issued a statement accusing Trump of leaving “the Biden-Harris Administration with zero plans for an orderly withdrawal — only a dangerous, costly mess.”
Breitbart News’s Kristina Wong reported:
Trump had begun negotiations with the Taliban and reached a deal, but it had not been completed by the time he left office in January 2020. Biden — against the advice of his militry advisers — decided to withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan in September 2021, which prompted the Taliban to sweep into Kabul at the end of August 2021 and topple the U.S.-backed government in a surprise rout. The sudden takeover prompted mass panic and chaos as hundreds of thousands of Americans, foreign civilians, and desperate Afghans scrambled to depart.
A year after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in the aftermath of the botched withdrawal, Trump issued a statement describing the withdrawal as being “the most embarrassing, incompetent, and humiliating event in the history of the United States.”
