The House Foreign Affairs Committee has been trying to get a classified cable from Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the State Department for months. The cable reportedly warned that Kabul could collapse soon after the August 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. The Biden team doesn’t want to turn that over because the position has been that no one told Joe Biden that could happen. So the cable would reveal yet another potential Biden lie right as he’s trying to run for re-election.
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul (R-TX) said that Blinken and the State Department have failed to comply with their multiple requests to turn over the information since March. In a letter that he released on Monday, he demanded that the State Department provide an unredacted version of the cable and their official response by Thursday, May 11, or Blinken would face contempt charges.
That subpoena, which compels you to produce in unredacted form “[t]he Dissent Channel cable sent on or about July 13, 2021, reportedly signed by 23 State Department officials and the official response to it,” 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.
Blinken has blown past the first deadline in March. Then they got an extension until April, then another one until May 1, and blew past those as well. The Biden team has tried to get around providing the cable by producing a one-page “summary” and giving the Committee a briefing on the cable on April 27.
But that only raises more questions about why they won’t produce the full cable. What are they trying to hide? We already know the nature of the cable — that they were warned about the potential collapse, so that if they say they weren’t that’s just a lie. But what is said must be so bad and obvious they’re doing all kinds of things to avoid producing it. That gives you an indication of how devastating to Joe Biden it must be that they’re going through all this.
The State Department tried to spin on Monday their failure to comply with the subpoena.
“It’s unfortunate that despite having received a classified briefing on the dissent channel cable, as well as a written summary, that the House Foreign Affairs Committee continues to pursue this unnecessary and unproductive action,” State Department principal deputy spokesman Vedant Patel said Monday. “Nevertheless, we will continue to respond to appropriate oversight inquiries and provide Congress the information it needs to do its job while protecting the ability of State Department employees to do theirs.”
Except they haven’t complied with the subpoena if they haven’t turned over the full cable and anything else in that comment is just malarkey.
Part of the problem is that they know how badly Biden’s failures on the Afghanistan withdrawal damaged him in the polls. He’s never recovered from how that opened the eyes of so many Americans when it comes to him. I think that’s why they are so fearful here — they know that this is going to be more light shown on how much he’s lied about the situation and that will hurt him badly as he’s trying to run for re-election.
If they fail to turn it over, not only is that going nail Blinken, but it’s going to look very bad for Biden as well. Blinken is already in trouble over allegedly lying to Congress over his email contact with Hunter Biden, as I previously reported.
It sounds like McCaul isn’t playing around here and this is it — comply or else.
