Blinken urges House Foreign Affairs chair to withdraw subpoena and defends 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal
CNN
Secretary of State Antony Blinken says he is “profoundly disappointed” with House Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul after the Texas Republican sent a subpoena and threatened to hold Blinken in contempt following repeated requests to accommodate a hearing as part of the committee’s investigation into the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken says he is “profoundly disappointed” with House Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul after the Texas Republican sent a subpoena and threatened to hold Blinken in contempt following repeated requests to accommodate a hearing as part of the committee’s investigation into the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. “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 urged McCaul to withdraw the subpoena, reconsider the contempt proceedings and seek “good faith engagement with the (State) Department to find an appropriate accommodation.” McCaul has been investigating the Biden administration’s handling of the deadly 2021 evacuation and decided to release his final report in the weeks before the presidential election as he has simultaneously pressed for Blinken to appear before the committee on the topic once again. McCaul’s quest for holding the Biden administration accountable for the chaotic departure comes as former President Donald Trump’s campaign seeks to make the decisions surrounding the exit a key issue in the final weeks before November’s presidential election. McCaul is also seeking to place Vice President Kamala Harris at the center of the 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.
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