The Republican-led House Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday moved to charge Secretary of State Antony Blinken with ignoring a subpoena to appear before the committee, prompting accusations from Democrats of partisan maneuvering ahead of the November election.
Blinken argued that it would be impossible for him to attend the hearing because he is attending the United Nations General Assembly in New York City this week. He was part of the US delegation watching President Biden deliver his final speech at the UN on Tuesday morning, when the hearing's opening gavel rang out.
The contempt action comes in response to questions from House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) about the secretary of state's testimony following the release earlier this month of a three-year report into the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Democrats denounced the report as partisan and criticized it for focusing only on Biden's chaotic and deadly implementation of the withdrawal without taking into account former President Trump's role in agreeing to the withdrawal from Afghanistan and the scope of two decades of U.S. policy in Afghanistan.
“Instead of serious fact-finding or oversight, this investigation is designed to narrow the scope of ending America's longest war to just a few months of the Biden administration, and it's a political stunt, not a fact-finding exercise,” Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), the committee's ranking director, said in his opening remarks.
“The secretary has made it clear on multiple occasions that he is prepared to testify, so why the sudden rush to move forward with this contempt vote,” he added. “Is it because of the election coming up on November 5th? Is it politics that is driving this urgency?”
The House of Representatives is recessing this week and into October to allow for campaigning ahead of the November elections, before reconvening afterwards.
In a letter to McCaul on September 22, Blinken said he had “privately sought a compromise with the Chairman” about alternative dates for his testimony before the committee, and offered one of the vice chairs to testify before the committee on the days he was unable to attend.
Blinken said he had two calls with McCaul about finding an alternative date for the testimony.
“I am deeply disappointed that rather than negotiate meaningfully with me and the Department of Justice to resolve this matter through the constitutional settlement process, you have chosen to once again issue subpoenas and threaten contempt charges,” a copy of the letter obtained by The Hill said.
But McCaul also criticized Secretary of State Blinken for refusing to testify in September, rejecting the State Department's defense that the secretary had testified before Congress 14 times and before committees four times about the U.S. troop withdrawal, and said he specifically asked him to testify about the findings of the report released on Sept. 8.
“I take no pleasure in this process. After months of the Secretary of Defense ignoring countless requests for his testimony, I have been forced to issue a subpoena to discuss the results of my investigation into the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan,” McCaul said at Tuesday's hearing. “Let me put it on the record that for four months I have patiently waited for the Secretary of Defense to be available in September, yet Mr. Birnken has made false promises and accused me of politicizing this important issue.”
“I proposed it any time in September, even for just a few hours. The Secretary of State could not find a day or an hour to sit in the US Congress and respond to our report and legislate on it. Unbelievable. It was bad timing, not my timing,” he added.
But Democrats jumped on the pretense of having the secretary of state appear before the committee in September before the election, just as he was to represent the country at the annual U.N. General Assembly. In his letter, Blinken detailed his particularly busy schedule for Tuesday.
“This is purely a political move. It is shocking that with just over 40 days until the presidential election, there has been no response to Secretary of State Blinken's requests to reschedule to a day when he must attend the UN General Assembly,” said Rep. Susan Wild (D-Pennsylvania).
“Let me be clear: I have been openly critical of the implementation of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, but I have also been vocal about ending this war,” she added.
Still, Republicans and Democrats alike agree that Blinken wants to be on the committee, and the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 has come under bipartisan criticism as the administration was ill-prepared for the Taliban's siege of Kabul, the rapid collapse of the U.S.-backed Afghan government and mass civilian displacement. It remains one of the darkest stains on Biden's term.
An ISIS-K bomb attack at Kabul airport killed 13 U.S. soldiers and injured many Afghans. Over the course of two weeks, more than 120,000 people fled Afghanistan, while the drawdown of U.S. military and diplomatic forces in the country has left thousands of U.S. citizens and Afghan allies stranded.
Republicans have seized on the bombing as a symbol of Biden's mishandling of the withdrawal, and McCaul has focused his investigative efforts on holding people accountable for security failings that allowed the attack to happen.
But Democrats have slammed the report as a political attack, saying it taints the work of a committee that sees itself as above partisan politics.
“This is one of the few vestiges of decency, cooperation, partnership and common principles that remain in the United States Congress, and I think it's despicable that we're doing this today,” said Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.), whose father was killed in the Vietnam War.
Phillips said an investigation into Afghanistan's failures is needed to honor the more than 2,000 soldiers who have died in combat in more than two decades in Afghanistan, as well as those wounded in combat, like his committee colleague Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.), who lost both legs while serving in Afghanistan.
But he criticized the committee for being too polarized under Chairman McCaul.
“Hell, have we lost the respect and the reverence for this institution, our friendship, our collegiality,” Phillips said. “And that's all I wanted to say today. The American people watching us act again, watching us do this, it's despicable, and I apologize to all 350 million Americans who are wondering what on earth is going on in the most important institution in the world.”
