CNN —
House Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul is moving ahead with plans on Tuesday to hold Secretary of State Antony Blinken in contempt of Congress for failing to attend a hearing on the Biden administration’s handling of the 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal, despite the fact that the nation’s top diplomat is attending an annual high-level meeting at the United Nations in New York.
It’s the latest political maneuver by the Republican chairman, who earlier this month issued a subpoena for the top U.S. diplomat to testify about McCaul’s investigation into the deadly withdrawal. In a letter this weekend, Blinken called on McCaul to drop the subpoena and “enter into good faith negotiations” with the State Department “to identify an appropriate response.”
House Republicans, along with former President Donald Trump’s campaign, have sought to make the decision over withdrawal a key issue in the final weeks before the November presidential election.
McCaul conducted a long-running investigation into the 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal, and his findings were released earlier this month in a report that was criticized by Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Biden administration as partisan and biased.
McCaul and the State Department have been blaming each other for weeks over efforts to hold Blinken in contempt. As part of the ongoing investigation, McCaul subpoenaed Blinken in early September to testify publicly on the report, and a hearing was scheduled for last week when the top U.S. diplomat was visiting Egypt and Paris. According to a committee spokesman, last Wednesday “in a further effort to accommodate the Secretary of State’s travel schedule,” McCaul issued a subpoena for Blinken to testify on Tuesday, when the top U.S. diplomat will appear at the United Nations and President Joe Biden will address the General Assembly.
On Tuesday morning, at a committee hearing ostensibly on Afghanistan withdrawal, McCaul, a Texas Republican, paused dramatically to listen to Blinken, who is in New York this week for global meetings at the United Nations.
“The purpose of today’s hearing is to hear directly from America’s top diplomat, Secretary of State Blinken, and to hear the State Department’s assessment of the Afghanistan withdrawal,” McCaul said, before being silent for more than 10 seconds as the committee’s video footage cut to an empty podium without Blinken.
“Unfortunately, our witness, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, is not here today,” McCaul said.
McCaul then postponed the hearing and moved directly to amending the report to recommend that Blinken, who did not attend the hearing, be held in contempt of Congress.
In a statement, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller called the contempt vote “a blatant political campaign disguised as oversight designed solely to advance the partisan interests of the majority under the guise of asking questions that have long since been answered.”
Miller noted that Defense Secretary Blinken has “testified before Congress 14 times on the Afghanistan withdrawal, including four times before Chairman McCaul’s committee,” and is prepared to testify another day.
“Chairman McCaul appears to believe that ceding control of the diplomatic sphere to America’s enemies is in the nation’s interest, but we strongly disagree,” Miller added.
In a five-page letter sent Sunday, Blinken said he was “deeply disappointed” in McCaul.
“As I have made clear, I am prepared to testify and have offered several reasonable alternatives to the dates the Committee unilaterally requested while pursuing the President’s important foreign policy objectives,” Blinken said in the five-page letter on Sunday, adding that he discussed the matter with McCaul in August and early September and “privately sought to reach a compromise” with the committee.
Blinken wrote that in his Sept. 3 call with McCaul, he told him he would accompany him to two dates McCaul had scheduled for the hearings. Blinken added that this week’s events at the U.N. General Assembly had been planned for months.
“On September 24th alone – the day you asked me to appear – I will represent the United States at a UN Security Council debate on the war in Ukraine and debate with the foreign ministers of Russia and China. I will also host with the President a summit of the U.S.-led Global Coalition on Synthetic Narcotics to combat fentanyl production and trafficking. I will accompany President Biden to his UN General Assembly address and bilateral meetings with UN Secretary-General Guterres. I will meet with foreign ministers on the Global Infrastructure Partnership to secure engagement on Africa’s Lobito Corridor, and I will make several other bilateral and multilateral commitments,” Blinken detailed.
Blinken reiterated that the State Department “has spent thousands of hours” obtaining documents, briefings, interviews and other material the committee is seeking as part of its investigation into the Biden administration’s Afghanistan withdrawal.
McCaul also referred to the “Biden-Harris Administration” throughout the committee’s report on the withdrawal, seeking to place Vice President Kamala Harris at the center of the fiasco in 2021. The committee had previously only mentioned the Biden Administration in its interim reports.
This story has been updated with additional developments.
CNN’s Michael Conte and Annie Grayer contributed to this report.
