Joe Biden’s Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, may soon be charged with contempt of Congress, as his office has disregarded several subpoenas for documents issued by the Republican-led House Oversight Committee.
Rep. Mike McCaul (R-Tex.), the Chairman of the House Oversight, says that Antony Blinken and the State Department have missed several deadlines for submitting documents related to President Biden’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan over the past few months. McCaul is now warning that he will take action to hold Blinken in contempt if he continues to obstruct the investigation.
“The Department is now in violation of its legal obligation to produce these documents and must do so immediately,” McCaul said in a Monday statement. “Should the Department fail to comply with its legal obligation, the Committee is prepared to take the necessary steps to enforce its subpoena, including holding you in contempt of Congress and/or initiating a civil enforcement proceeding.”
Blinken has until May 11 to provide the documents.
McCaul and other Republicans are requesting access to a dissent report issued by the U.S. Embassy in Kabul shortly before Joe Biden initiated his ill-fated withdrawal plans. Dissent reports typically outline any reservations that American officials may have regarding a specific course of action.
Blinken’s State Department chose not to comply with the subpoena but instead proposed to provide a briefing on the documents’ contents to McCaul and his committee. McCaul originally agreed to the briefing but has since made it clear that it did not meet the requirements of complying with the subpoena, as McCaul and other Republican members of the committee maintained that they had unresolved inquiries that could only be resolved by examining the requested documents.
The State Department, for some reason, doesn’t seem to want to give the committee access to the documents.
“It’s unfortunate that despite having received a classified briefing on the dissent channel cable, as well as a written summary, that the House Foreign Affairs Committee continues to pursue this unnecessary and unproductive action,” said State Department principal deputy spokesman Vedant Patel. “Nevertheless, we will continue to respond to appropriate oversight inquiries and provide Congress the information it needs to do its job while protecting the ability of State Department employees to do theirs.”
Related: Nothing to See Here: Blinken Used Private Email Address to Keep in Touch with Hunter Biden
This development is the latest scandal to affect Secretary of State Blinken. Last month it was revealed that Blinken orchestrated the letter from 51 former intelligence officials that falsely labeled Hunter Biden’s laptop as Russian disinformation on behalf of the Biden presidential campaign, making him a key figure in the Biden campaign’s election interference scheme.
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