The House Foreign Affairs Committee voted on Tuesday to recommend the full chamber hold Secretary of State Antony Blinken in contempt of Congress for not appearing before the committee to testify on the failures of the U.S. withdrawal of Afghanistan.
The committee voted 26 to 25 to hold Blinken in contempt for ignoring a subpoena sent last week to appear before a hearing on the preparation failures and department-level mistakes that led to the deaths of 13 U.S. service members and nearly 200 Afghans in 2021.
With Blinken a no-show at the hearing due to his travel schedule in his capacity as secretary of state, the committee held a markup to hold him in contempt. The resolution will now be scheduled to head to the House for a full vote.
During the hearing, Democrats argued that Republicans were using the contempt resolution and the hearing in general as a political ploy ahead of a contentious 2024 election. Republicans rebutted and said Democrats neglected for years to investigate the withdrawal when they held the majority and argued Blinken’s absence is political and either “willful neglect or cowardice.”
“I don’t care … how many times Tony Blinken has to inconvenience himself to come before the people’s representatives,” Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL) said during the hearing. “I don’t care if it’s once, twice, 10 times, 15 times, until we get some answers.”
“You know, what’s political? Inaction can be political, too,” Waltz added. “And the inaction, ranking member [Gregory] Meeks, of this committee in the years after the withdrawal is also political…Antony Blinken saying, ‘Well, I’ll come after the election,’ that’s also political. You know what our elections drive? Our elections drive accountability. The American people get a vote for this disgrace.”
The hearing comes two weeks after the Foreign Affairs GOP majority released a lengthy report laying out several breakdowns of security and communication that led to the controversial withdrawal. McCaul argued in a statement that the report was “not about politics to me… but about getting to the bottom of what happened.”
Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) said “I don’t question” McCaul or House Republicans’ intent for the investigation and hearing, but argued that holding a hearing 42 days before an election gives off a bad “perception” and ultimately does not give any answers to U.S. Gold Star families.
“I think what went on in Afghanistan is one of the most important things that we can find out to make sure that it doesn’t happen again,” Moskowitz said. “Tell the speaker to cancel recess. Let’s have more hearings on Afghanistan…this Congress has had more hearings on gas stoves and refrigerators and ceiling fans and blenders than they’ve had on Afghanistan. And that’s not the chairman’s fault, but that’s this Congress.”
“We owe that to the Gold Star families,” Moskowitz added. “But we’re doing it 42 days before the election? All of the sudden?”
Blinken and the State Department have argued the secretary has been fully cooperative with the House committee. In a letter sent ahead of the hearing, he said he was “profoundly disappointed” with Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX) due to his nonaccommodating stance on his travel schedule.
“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.
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Republicans are pursuing other resolutions to condemn the Afghanistan withdrawal. House members will vote this week on a resolution to condemn Biden administration officials, including Blinken, President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and others involved in the decision to pull out of the Middle East.
The legislation ensures “accountability for key officials in the Biden-Harris administration responsible for decisionmaking and execution failures throughout the withdrawal from Afghanistan.”