Secretary of State Antony Blinken could face charges of contempt of Congress after a key House committee advanced the criminal measure on Tuesday.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee has introduced a contempt resolution against Biden's top cabinet members, preparing for a vote by the full House when Congress returns from a six-week recess, marking the first time in history that a secretary of state has been held in contempt.
“We have a duty of oversight and no one is above the law,” McCaul told Fox News Digital on Tuesday morning.
House Republicans release scathing report on Biden's Afghanistan withdrawal
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul has moved to hold Secretary of State Antony Blinken in contempt of Congress. (Getty Images)
Asked whether the full House would vote to hold Blinken in contempt when Congress returns in November, House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, told Fox News Digital that “it will definitely happen.”
If the House votes to hold Blinken in contempt, he will automatically face criminal charges from the Department of Justice (DOJ).
House committee subpoenas Blinken over Afghanistan withdrawal
The House Republican majority has already filed contempt charges against another senior Biden administration official, Attorney General Merrick Garland, but the Justice Department has declined to press charges.
House Republicans also voted to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, but the Senate quickly rejected that.
McCaul accused Blinken of obstructing the committee's investigation into President Biden's disorderly August 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan.
McCaul has subpoenaed Blinken to discuss the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan. (Getty Images)
However, Blinken did not attend the hearing due to a packed schedule at the United Nations General Assembly in New York this week.
In a letter to McCaul over the weekend, Blinken said he was “disappointed” in the Texas Republican and called on McCaul to withdraw the subpoena and contempt charges.
“As I have made clear, I am prepared to testify and have offered several reasonable alternatives to the timeline the Committee unilaterally requested to pursue the President's key foreign policy objectives,” Blinken wrote.
But McCaul denied the allegations made by Biden administration officials.
“I gave it to him any day,” McCall countered, “and he refused it any day in September.”
“He doesn't have a single day in September to attend Congress? I've been very open with him since May to get his cooperation.”
The House previously voted to hold Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in contempt. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
This comes after the McCaul Commission released a shocking report detailing the Biden administration's failings that led to the hasty withdrawal of troops from Kabul after the Taliban's lightning-fast takeover of the city.
The Republican-led report begins by looking back at Biden's rush to withdraw from the Vietnam War as a senator in the 1970s, which, along with the withdrawal from Afghanistan, shows “a pattern of dispassionate foreign policy positions and a willingness to abandon strategic partners,” according to the report.
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The report also disputed Biden's assertion that he was bound by the Doha agreement that former President Trump struck with the Taliban, which set a summer 2021 deadline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops, and made clear that administration officials had no plans to withdraw Americans and allies while troops were still there to protect them.
The two most recent contempt votes in the House of Representatives that resulted in criminal charges are against former Trump administration advisers Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro, who were found in contempt by the former House Democratic majority for failing to comply with subpoenas from a now-disbanded House select committee on January 6.
