WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The House Foreign Affairs Committee on Thursday postponed a meeting where it had been due to consider holding Secretary of State Antony Blinken in contempt of Congress for withholding documents related to the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
A committee spokeswoman said the meeting was postponed, but the panel did not set a new date for the meeting or say why it was delayed.
Republican Representative Michael McCaul, the committee’s chairman, said last week the panel would meet on March 7 to consider a resolution recommending that Blinken be held in contempt “for his continued refusal to comply with a subpoena served by the committee in July.”
The House committee has been seeking more information from the State Department for months over the withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021. Republicans – and some Democrats – say there has never been a full accounting of the chaotic operation, in which 13 U.S. service members were killed at Kabul’s airport.
State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said at the time that the department was in touch with the foreign affairs committee and would try to resolve the issue before March 7.
The State Department says it has turned over thousands of pages of documents to the committee and made witnesses available for transcribed interviews, while noting that the executive branch has “legitimate confidentiality rights.”
(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle and Doina Chiacu; Editing by Bernadette Baum)
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