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Antony Blinken thumbed his nose at one subpoena too many. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul isn’t happy. The Texas Republican is so furious he already scheduled a markup hearing to hold the Secretary of State in contempt. He really wants Blinky to testify under oath about his botched, Saigon-like evacuation from Afghanistan.
Blinken in contempt
By failing to respond to a valid House subpoena, Antony Blinken has already committed Contempt of Congress. He might not get away with it. Michael McCaul, Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has already done the groundwork.
McCaul went ahead and scheduled the “markup” hearing for September 19.
That’s when the committee will draw up formal charges “to hold Secretary of State Antony Blinken in contempt of Congress.”
No matter how they state it or anything they add in along with it, the key issue is his failure “to respond to a subpoena issued last week for his testimony on the Afghanistan exit.”
After the committee goes through the measure, wrangling over the language and inserting their own points, “the full House would need to vote on the measure to refer it to the Department of Justice for prosecution.” Everybody knows that sending it to Merrick Garland would be the same as tossing it in a trash can.
That’s exactly what the reigning Attorney General would do. And why they plan to drag things out until after the election. A contempt charge on Blinken “could be treated differently in a potential second Trump term.” A lot differently.
He already testified
Blinky seems to think that a congressional subpoena is something that can be safely tossed in a drawer. He already testified before and doesn’t want to do it again. The first time he talked to McCaul’s committee was in September 2021, “one month after the withdrawal.”
In total, “Blinken has testified before Congress on Afghanistan more than 14 times, including four times in front of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.” The difference is now, they know what to ask him.
A report was just released by McCaul and his committee. They spent three entire years investigating what did and didn’t happen.
Their conclusions are “highly critical of Biden’s decision to withdraw all U.S. military forces from Afghanistan and accuses the administration of failing to plan for all contingencies.” Blinken was the one telling Joe what to do. It didn’t turn out to be the best advice.
Blinky and the Pentagon were convinced that the Afghan government could keep things under control for at least a few months. They collapsed to the Taliban in mere hours. Blinken is also taking heat “over a suicide bombing carried out by ISIS-K at Kabul’s international airport that killed 13 U.S. service members, roughly 170 Afghans, and wounded scores more during the withdrawal.” The State Department sent their spokesunit Matthew Miller to make a statement.
He tells McCaul to take a tranquilizer or something and get a grip. Blinky’s minions proposed “a number of reasonable alternatives to comply with Chairman McCaul’s request for a public hearing, including offering alternative senior-level witnesses to testify next week or making the Secretary available to testify at a later date that works for both his and the committee’s schedule.“
