Rep. McCaul threatens to subpoena State Dept. records on Afghan bug-out

 The Hill:

The Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee is warning that the State Department will face a subpoena if it fails to deliver on repeated document requests related to the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

In a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken sent Monday, McCaul set a deadline of Wednesday evening for the State Department to provide at least three documents requested.

The demand coincides with Blinken’s expected appearance on Thursday before the committee to discuss President Biden’s budget request for 2024.

McCaul said the committee is requesting the three specific documents based on a request by the State Department to identify materials considered the most consequential to the committee’s oversight duties.

“From its broader January 12 request, the Committee identified on January 30 three highly specific immediate priority items that are well-known to the Department,” McCaul wrote in the letter.

“All of the items specified on March 3 could be produced extremely quickly if they were genuinely prioritized by the Department. … A ‘diligent’ process working in good faith to produce these documents ‘as soon as practicable’ would have produced them long ago.”
...

Critics have blamed the U.S. intelligence community and the Biden administration for failing to identify the warning signs that the internationally backed government in Kabul would collapse, and for having little to no plan in place to evacuate Americans and Afghan allies.

A suicide bombing that killed 13 U.S. service members, and wounded scores of others, at the Kabul international airport in the chaos of evacuations was viewed as a fatal security failure.
...

I suspect the material is being withheld because it is embarrassing to President Biden and State Department officials. 

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