The House Foreign Affairs Committee has been waiting since early March for dissent cables from Afghanistan.
This is part of the House investigation into the withdrawal to find out what went wrong.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken does not want to give up those cables. For those not familiar, these are all the communications with embassy staff that were critical of what was going on, hence the term dissent.
Done Playing Games
Rep. McCaul (R-TX) is the chairman of the committee and he has been more than fair in waiting for the cables.
When the State Department offered to give him a briefing on the cable, he accepted it, but he also made it clear that this was not in lieu of the actual cables.
The State Department has now missed three deadlines, so McCaul is now threatening Blinken with contempt charges. Quite frankly, I would have already filed them, but that’s just me, reports Fox News.
McCaul gave Blinken one final chance, on Friday, sending him a letter.
In part, the letter stated, “That subpoena … must be complied with immediately. Should you fail to comply, 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,” reports the New York Post.
During the briefing McCaul was given, the summation of the cable was less than a page long, but the actual dissent cable was four pages long, so there are clearly things in there that Blinken does not want members of Congress to see.
McCaul stated, “The Department has confirmed that the original dissent cable totaled four pages in length, meaning that the summary represented a 75% reduction of the original cable. The Department’s summaries and briefing are insufficient to satisfy the Committee’s need for the actual dissent cable and response.”
McCaul needs to get a backbone and file the referral. If the DOJ refuses to honor the referral, we can hit Garland for clearly showing two different justice systems, especially for how readily he handed out indictments to Trump officials that did not comply with congressional subpoenas.
McCaul, file the referral today!
