{"id":16168,"date":"2024-02-28T00:46:19","date_gmt":"2024-02-28T00:46:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/2024\/02\/28\/mccaul-threatens-to-hold-blinken-in-contempt-of-congress-for-withholding-key-afghanistan-documents\/"},"modified":"2024-02-28T00:46:19","modified_gmt":"2024-02-28T00:46:19","slug":"mccaul-threatens-to-hold-blinken-in-contempt-of-congress-for-withholding-key-afghanistan-documents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/2024\/02\/28\/mccaul-threatens-to-hold-blinken-in-contempt-of-congress-for-withholding-key-afghanistan-documents\/","title":{"rendered":"McCaul threatens to hold Blinken in contempt of Congress for \u2018withholding\u2019 key Afghanistan documents"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Texas, is threatening to hold Secretary of State Antony Blinken in contempt of Congress, accusing him of failing to hand over key documents related to the U.S.\u2019s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

At the heart of the issue are interview notes that were used to put together the State Department\u2019s After-Action Review (AAR) of the Afghanistan withdrawal.<\/p>\n

\u2018The Committee\u2019s patience has been exhausted, and it requires these files to complete its investigation and make legislative recommendations for this Congress to consider,\u2019 McCaul wrote.<\/p>\n

\u2018Should the Department fail to produce the\u2026 files outlined below by March 6, 2024, the Committee is prepared to hold you in contempt of Congress.\u2019<\/p>\n

He also accused Blinken of choosing \u2018politics over policy\u2019 with the State Department\u2019s decision to \u2018withhold\u2019 the documents.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s notably harsh language for McCaul, whose relationship with Blinken is relatively more cordial than that of other House Republican committee chairs investigating the Biden administration.<\/p>\n

In his letter, he noted multiple instances in which McCaul accused the department of stonewalling, including after he first requested notes from interviews with State officials taken by then-Ambassador Dan Smith, who led the AAR in September 2023.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He also listed ways in which the committee sought to accommodate the department. For example, McCaul wrote that the committee offered to redact names and address security concerns after State officials told him providing the notes would have a \u2018significant chilling effect on the Department\u2019s ability to conduct thorough and impactful lessons learned efforts to improve our foreign policy-making.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018On November 28, 2023, the Committee once more requested the interview notes, stating that the Department had failed to produce any high-priority items in its last eight productions,\u2019 the letter said. \u2018For the next month, the Department stated the priority items requested, including the AAR team\u2019s interview notes, \u2018either belong to a third agency or implicate significant Executive Branch confidentiality interests.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

When committee staff stressed that the documents were critical to the House\u2019s probe, State officials responded that the decision was above their \u2018paygrade,\u2019 according to the letter.<\/p>\n

\u2018The Department\u2019s stated reasons for withholding the interview notes are not rooted in law and, in fact, contravene Congress\u2019s constitutional and statutory oversight authority,\u2019 McCaul wrote. \u2018It is appalling that over two years after the deadly and chaotic withdrawal, the Department continues to choose politics over policy.\u2019<\/p>\n

The Afghanistan AAR placed blame on both the Trump and Biden administrations for the disastrous withdrawal in August 2021.<\/p>\n

It said, \u2018there was insufficient senior-level consideration of worst-case scenarios and how quickly those might follow.\u2019<\/p>\n

The report said President Biden\u2019s decision to follow through with former President Donald Trump\u2019s vow to withdraw troops from Afghanistan \u2013 and to set a Sept. 11 deadline for it \u2013 ultimately \u2018compounded the difficulties the Department faced in mitigating the loss of the military\u2019s key enablers.\u2019<\/p>\n

It was also critical of the Biden administration\u2019s decision to hand over control of Bagram Air Base to the Afghan government, a decision that also earned Biden bipartisan condemnation from national security hawks.<\/p>\n

Fox News Digital reached out to the State Department about McCaul\u2019s letter but did not immediately hear back.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

This post appeared first on FOX NEWS<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Texas, is threatening to hold Secretary of State Antony Blinken in contempt of Congress, accusing him of failing to hand over key documents related to the U.S.\u2019s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. At the heart of the issue are interview notes that were used to put together the State <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":16169,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-16168","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16168\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}