Three years after the August 2021 withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Relations Committee is still investigating the matter. The commission issued a subpoena to Secretary of State Blinken to attend a hearing on May 24 and testify about the withdrawal of U.S. troops, Reuters reported Tuesday.
Blinken, Secretary of State
Reuters quoted the commission as saying in a statement, “If Brinkene fails to appear in court, the chairman will instead sit in a committee of the whole and consider a report that will recommend that the House of Representatives find Blinken in contempt of Congress and in violation of a duly issued subpoena.”.This is not the first time the house foreign relations committee has tried to subpoena Brinkene over the withdrawal of Afghan troops. Earlier this month, the committee’s chairman, a Republican Michael McCaul, called on Blinken to attend the hearing on the 19th. In a statement, McCall said the Committee is investigating the Biden administration’s “Catastrophic withdrawal” from Afghanistan and has asked Blinken to appear and testify, but many times with the state council to communicate the specific date failed. The foreign affairs committee hereby subpoenaed Blinken in light of the state department’s “Continued delay and non-response” to its repeated requests for a date for the hearing. McCall also said current and former State Department officials had confirmed that Blinken was the “Ultimate decision maker” for the Afghan withdrawal, so you can tell the committee to consider possible legislative measures that could help avoid a catastrophic mistake like a withdrawal.
The State Department had previously responded that Blinken could not testify on that date. The The Hill quoted State Department spokesman Matthew Miller as saying that Blinken had testified in Congress more than 14 times, including four times before the foreign affairs committee, including a hearing focusing on Afghanistan. Miller added that the State Department had come up with reasonable alternatives to meet McCall’s demands for public hearings and had provided the foreign affairs committee with nearly 20,000 pages of documents.
Earlier this month, House Republicans released a report on the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, severely criticizing the Biden administration for its failure in this chaotic withdrawal, the Associated Press reported, he blamed the latter for the”Disastrous outcome” of the war in Afghanistan.