First appearance on Fox: A Republican lawmaker is taking issue with Secretary of State Antony Blinken's assertion that the State Department did not prevent citizens from leaving Afghanistan's Mazar-e-Sharif Air Base during the frenzied withdrawal.
Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) said in a letter obtained by FOX News Digital that the State Department directed how many planes were blocked from taking off from Air Force bases and who directed whether planes were cleared for takeoff. I wanted to know what the standards were. Did they prevent the flight from being delayed? Did they communicate with the Taliban?
After the withdrawal, there were reports that 1,000 people, including Americans, were stranded at Mazar-e-Sharif Airport, waiting for permission to leave the country on a chartered flight.
Many had made the 400-mile journey from Kabul in order to be able to leave faster at airports in northern Afghanistan.
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In a letter obtained by FOX News Digital, Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) demanded to know how many planes the State Department has blocked from taking off from air bases.
One flight organizer told Reuters that the State Department failed to inform the Taliban of approval for the plane to depart from Mazar-e-Sharif or to verify the landing site.
In his letter, Davidson asked “what tail number” officials were referring to when consulting with the State Department, saying multiple flights were delayed without clearance for takeoff. He said he was hinting that.
Colonel Francis Huang, who worked on the evacuation from Afghanistan with his group Combined Airlift 21, told the Foreign Affairs Committee: “We spent three weeks hiding about 400 of these people from the Taliban, and with funds from US donors, we I kept them alive and fed them,” he said.
At last week's hearing, Mr. Davidson asked Mr. Blinken: “Did the State Department prevent American citizens from departing from the airfield in Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan?”
“Absolutely not,” Blinken said.
“You know they got blocked!” Davidson said.
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“I'd be happy to look into any information you have on that. I don't know of any American citizens who have been blocked.”
Hundreds of people gather near a U.S. Air Force C-17 transport plane on the perimeter of Kabul International Airport, Afghanistan, Monday, August 17, 2021. (AP)
“I have an email. I have a photo of an American citizen with a blue passport who was waiting to depart at an airfield with permission to depart to a safe third country. That order came from the U.S. government. What about the State Department?'' Davidson asked.
Mr. Blinken's testimony came three months after the committee voted along party lines to recommend that Mr. Blinken be held in contempt of Congress, but Mr. refused to attend testimony.
Republicans released a lengthy report in September highlighting that State Department officials had no plan to extricate Americans and allies while troops were still there to protect them.
The report claimed that then-U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Ross Wilson, expanded the embassy's footprint without sending staff home, despite warnings from military officials that a takeover by the Taliban was imminent. .
Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul told Blinken: “You ignored warnings of collapse from your own officials.”
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Blinken defended the Biden administration's handling of the withdrawal, saying all Americans who wanted to leave were given the opportunity to do so and thousands of Afghans were resettled internationally.
President-elect Donald Trump has promised to call for the resignation of all senior officials “touched by the Afghanistan tragedy.”
Democrats, meanwhile, say the deal President Trump negotiated with the Taliban for the U.S. withdrawal is to blame for the disastrous outcome of the two-decade war.
