Blinken threatened with contempt of Congress over Afghanistan documents

The chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee has threatened to hold Secretary of State Antony Blinken in contempt over his department’s withholding of documents related to the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.

“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,” wrote Michael McCaul in a letter to Mr Blinken on Monday night.

“The committee is prepared to hold you in contempt of Congress.”

This most recent dispute between the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and President Joe Biden’s administration has centred on interview documents relied on to draft the State Department’s After-Action Review (AAR) on the end to the war in Afghanistan.

It is the latest in a string of correspondence between the Biden administration and the House Foreign Affairs Committee, which has been ratcheting up pressure over the Afghanistan withdrawal.

The end to America’s longest war led to the country quickly descending into chaos, with thousands of Afghans fleeing amid the Taliban’s swift takeover of Kabul.

Citing a range of ignored committee requests dating back to January last year, Mr McCaul said the State 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”.

Mike McCaul said the State Department had contravened Congress’s constitutional and statutory authority. Reuters

He also accused Mr Blinken of failing “to both comply with the committee’s July 2023 subpoena and [fulfilling] your August 11 personal commitment to co-operate with this investigation”.

State Department spokesman Matthew Miller responded on Tuesday, saying the administration has asked Mr McCaul “to speak to the Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources, Rich Verma, to discuss our concerns in order to try to reach some understanding and those requests have gone unanswered”.

“We remain committed to accommodating the committee’s legitimate need for information regarding the withdrawal … for more than six months we have every week provided hundreds of pieces of hundreds of documents and information from the AAR files,” Mr Miller said.

He added the most recent submission from the Department was last Friday.

Criminal contempt of Congress is a process by which the House or Senate can seek to hold a witness accountable for failing to comply with a committee subpoena.

It is a misdemeanour criminal offence to “wilfully” fail to comply with a congressional subpoena for either documents or testimony “upon any matter under inquiry before either House … or any committee of either House of Congress”, according to the Congressional Research Office (CRO).

A witness suffers no direct legal consequence from House or Senate approval of a contempt citation, though “a variety of political consequences may flow from being held in contempt”.

“If the individual is prosecuted and convicted, violations … are punishable by a fine of up to $100,000 and imprisonment for not less than one month nor more than 12 months,” the CRO says – though that scenario is unlikely for Mr Blinken with a Democratic-controlled Senate.

Mr McCaul had previously threatened to use the measure against Mr Blinken but backed off after being granted access to a department dissent cable.

The committee’s top Democrat, Gregory Meeks, did not immediately reply to a request for comment.