The Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives The United States adopted a resolution accusing Secretary of State Anthony Blinken of contempt of Congress for his refusal to appear at a hearing on the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan in 2021, Reuters reported, quoted by BTA.
The text recommends that the full House declare the Secretary of State in contempt of the public after failing to appear at a hearing scheduled for Tuesday.
All 26 members of the committee who supported the resolution are Republicans, and the 25 who voted "against" are representatives of the Democratic Party.
Blinken, who is in New York for the UN General Assembly, sent a letter to committee chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) on Sunday saying he had tried to agree on a date when he could appeared at the hearing and that, in addition, he offered alternative witnesses.
McColl said before the vote that Blinken had refused to appear within this month. According to the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the Secretary of State could not "find a single day... to appear before the United States Congress".
"The State Department has made clear in its repeated contacts with the committee that he is willing to testify again, but is unable to do so today because he is engaged in high-level diplomacy at the UN General Assembly." , State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said.
On September 8, McCaul published a report on the commission's investigation into the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan before 2021, in which he criticized the administration of President Joe Biden for the failures surrounding the evacuation.
The State Department said Blinken has testified before Congress on the matter more than 14 times, including four times before the committee, and that the department has provided nearly 20,000 pages of documents.
/НВ/
Source: www.bta.bg