House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul (R-Texas) subpoenaed Secretary of State Antony Blinken for what he described as a "refusal" to testify on the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.
The subpoena mandates Blinken appear before the committee on Sept. 19 or face contempt, the committee said in a statement Tuesday. It follows a more than a yearlong battle between the committee and the State Department over documents related to the country’s deadly pullout from Afghanistan at the end of August 2021.
"The Committee is holding this hearing because the Department of State was central to the Afghanistan withdrawal and served as the senior authority during the August non-combatant evacuation operation (NEO),” McCaul wrote in the letter to Blinken. “As Secretary of State throughout the withdrawal and NEO, you were entrusted to lead these efforts and to secure the safe evacuation of Americans and Afghan allies."
The subpoena comes months after McCaul threatened to hold Blinken in contempt in February if the State Department continued to allegedly withhold subpoenaed documents regarding the U.S. exit from Afghanistan. McCaul had repeatedly demanded the documents as part of Republicans’ investigation into what he called a “chaotic” withdrawal from the Middle Eastern country.
In March, McCaul postponed a markup for a contempt resolution for Blinken after the secretary agreed to produce the documents, months after the committee sent a subpoena for them in July 2023.
State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said Blinken has testified before Congress more than 14 times, and he said Blinken is currently unavailable to testify on the dates proposed by the committee.
"This includes four times directly before Chairman McCaul's Committee, including a previous hearing that focused exclusively on Afghanistan, all while the Department has provided the Committee with nearly 20,000 pages of Department records, multiple high-level briefings, and engaged on transcribed interviews on nearly 15 current and former State Department officials with the Committee," Miller wrote in a statement to The Hill.
Miller said the State Department has opposed "reasonable alternatives" to comply with McCaul's request for a public hearing.
"It is disappointing that instead of continuing to engage with the Department in good faith, the Committee instead has issued yet another unnecessary subpoena," he said.
In March 2023, McCaul issued a separate subpoena for a sensitive diplomatic cable on the withdrawal. The State Department missed the deadline, previously telling The Hill that Blinken offered to brief the chair without providing the actual document.
McCaul claimed a briefing or summary would not fulfill the subpoena and threatened again to hold Blinken in contempt of Congress.
The State Department eventually agreed to allow all committee members to view the diplomatic cable the following month.
Last week marked the three-year anniversary of the end of the deadly and chaotic U.S. withdrawal from the Middle Eastern country. Many evacuees and allies remain in limbo, and thousands airlifted out of the country are stuck in an immigration backlog that leaves them without a permanent way to remain in the U.S.
