House Foreign Affairs chair moving forward with plan to hold Blinken in contempt of Congress over 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal

By CNN Newsource

Published September 24, 2024 6:01 AM

By Kylie Atwood, Jennifer Hansler and Michael Conte, CNN

(CNN) — House Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul is moving forward with his plan to hold Secretary of State Antony Blinken in contempt of Congress on Tuesday for failing to appear at a hearing regarding the Biden administration’s handling of the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, even though the top US diplomat is at the annual high-level meetings at the United Nations in New York.

It’s the latest political maneuver from the Republican chairman, who issued a subpoena earlier this month for the top US diplomat to testify about McCaul’s investigation into the deadly withdrawal. In a letter this weekend, Blinken called on McCaul to withdraw the subpoena and “begin good faith engagement” with the State Department “to find an appropriate accommodation.”

House Republicans, along with former President Donald Trump’s campaign, have sought to make the decisions surrounding the withdrawal a key issue in the final weeks before November’s presidential election.

McCaul carried out a yearslong investigation into the 2021 exit from Afghanistan, the findings of which were released in report earlier this month. That report was denounced by Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Biden administration as partisan and biased.

McCaul and the State Department have cast blame at each other for weeks about the move to hold Blinken in contempt. As part of his ongoing probe, McCaul subpoenaed Blinken in early September to testify publicly about the report, and a hearing was scheduled for last week, when the top US diplomat was on travel in Egypt and Paris. Last Wednesday, “in an additional effort to accommodate the secretary’s travel schedule,” according to a committee spokesperson, McCaul issued a superseding subpoena for Blinken to testify Tuesday – when the top US diplomat was attending the UN and President Joe Biden addressed the General Assembly.

At a committee hearing that was ostensibly about the Afghanistan withdrawal Tuesday morning, McCaul, a Texas Republican, dramatically paused to hear from Blinken, who is spending the week in New York for the global gathering at the UN.

“The purpose of today’s hearing is to hear directly from Secretary Blinken, America’s top diplomat, and get his assessment of the State Department’s withdrawal from Afghanistan,” McCaul said before pausing for more than 10 seconds as the committee video feed cut to an empty dais at which Blinken was not present.

“Unfortunately our witness, the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, is not present today,” McCaul said.

McCaul then adjourned the hearing to go directly to a markup of a report recommending Blinken be held in contempt of Congress for failing to show up for the hearing.

State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller in a statement denounced the contempt vote as “a naked political exercise masquerading as oversight, designed only to further the majority’s partisan interests under the guise of asking questions that have long ago been answered.”

Miller noted that Blinken “has testified before Congress on the Afghanistan withdrawal fourteen times, including four times before Chairman McCaul’s committee” and was willing to do so on a different day.

“Chairman McCaul apparently believes it is in the nation’s interest to cede the diplomatic field to America’s adversaries, but we strongly disagree,” Miller added.

In a five-page letter Sunday, Blinken said he was “profoundly disappointed” with McCaul.

“As I have made clear, I am willing to testify and have offered several reasonable alternatives to the dates unilaterally demanded by the Committee during which I am carrying out the President’s important foreign policy objectives,” Blinken wrote in a five-page letter Sunday, adding that he spoke with McCaul about the matter in August and early September and “personally sought to reach an accommodation” with the panel.

Blinken wrote that during his September 3 phone call with McCaul, he told him he would be traveling on the two dates that McCaul had publicly scheduled for his hearing. Blinken added that the events this week at the UN General Assembly have been scheduled for months.

“On September 24 alone — the day you have asked me to appear — I will: represent the United States at the UN Security Council debate on the war in Ukraine, during which I will debate the Russian and Chinese foreign ministers; host alongside the President a leader-level meeting of the United States-led Global Coalition on Synthetic Drugs to fight the production and trafficking of fentanyl; accompany President Biden for his address to the General Assembly and his bilateral meeting with UN Secretary General Guterres; meet with foreign ministers in the Partnership for Global Infrastructure to secure commitments for the Lobito Corridor in Africa; and conduct several other bilateral and multilateral engagements,” Blinken detailed.

Blinken reiterated that the State Department has “expended thousands of hours” working to get the committee what it has asked for as part of its investigation into the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, including documents, briefings and interviews.

McCaul is also seeking to place Vice President Kamala Harris at the center of the 2021 debacle by naming the “Biden-Harris administration” throughout his committee’s report on the withdrawal. The panel had previously only referred to the Biden administration in an interim report.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

CNN’s Michael Conte and Annie Grayer contributed to this report.