McCaul threatening Blinken with contempt over Afghanistan withdrawal documents

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul (R-Texas) on Monday renewed his threat to hold Secretary of State Antony Blinken in contempt of Congress if the department “continues to withhold” subpoenaed documents on the U.S.’s exit from Afghanistan in 2021. 

McCaul, in a letter to Blinken, claimed the State Department’s After-Action Review (AAR) of the Biden administration’s 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan “found significant failures” in the department’s response. 

“The law does not afford the State Department blanket authority to hide behind ‘Executive Branch confidentiality interests’ to obstruct Congress’s access to the truth,” McCaul wrote. 

Punchbowl News was the first to report McCaul’s letter. 

The House Foreign Affairs Committee and the State Department have been in a battle since January 2023 over documents related to the country’s deadly pullout from Afghanistan at the end of August 2021. They are being requested as part of House Republicans’ investigation into what McCaul called a “chaotic” withdrawal from the Middle Eastern country. 

McCaul’s letter laid out a series of back-and-forth communications in recent months over the committee’s request for the AAR team’s interview notes, which he said included first-hand accounts.

The committee was told last month a State Department official reviewed the interview notes, which the White House and the National Security Council are now withholding, McCaul said. 

The Texas Republican warned that the committee is planning to hold Blinken in contempt of Congress if he does not hand over the AAR’s interview notes by March 6. 

“The officials communicated this decision is now above their ‘paygrade,'” McCaul wrote. “The Department’s stated reasons for withholding the interview notes are not rooted in law and, in fact, contravene Congress’s constitutional and statutory oversight authority.” “It is appalling that over two years after the deadly and chaotic withdrawal, the Department continues to choose politics over policy.”

The latest threat comes months after the committee issued a subpoena in July requesting the State Department hand over the documents. In August, McCaul claimed the department produced only a “meager 73 pages of significantly duplicative materials” by the subpoena’s July 25 deadline. 

He then demanded transcribed interviews with State Department officials, which he later canceled after claiming Blinken called him and communicated a “personal commitment to cooperating,” with the committee’s July subpoena. 

McCaul also issued a subpoena in late March for a sensitive diplomatic cable on the withdrawal, but the State Department missed the deadline, previously telling The Hill that Blinken offered to brief the chair without providing the actual document. McCaul pushed back on this argument, claiming a briefing or summary does not satisfy the subpoena. 

Blinken initially told McCaul he was opposed to providing the cable through the State Department’s Dissent Channel to protect the integrity of the channel, which is a communication mechanism that allows diplomats to raise serious concerns over U.S. foreign policy. These concerns are raised directly to the secretary and other senior State Department officials. 

After McCaul threatened in May to hold Blinken in contempt of Congress, the State Department eventually agreed to let all members of the committee view the dissent channel cable in June. 

The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.