Michael McCaul requests interviews with 5 officers on Afghanistan withdrawal

Home Overseas Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX) requested transcribed interviews with 5 officers relating to the Afghanistan withdrawal.

“Via our ongoing investigation, now we have decided these 5 people have essential data that's important to uncovering how and why the Biden administration’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan resulted within the deaths of 13 U.S. service members and the harm of 47 extra,” McCaul wrote.

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The 5 officers embody Jonathan Mennuti, former appearing chief of employees to appearing Undersecretary of State for Administration Carol Perez; Mark Evans, former appearing deputy assistant secretary for Afghanistan; James DeHart, former lead on the Afghanistan Job Power; Jayne Howell, Bureau of Consular Affairs; and former Ambassador Daniel Smith.

Smith led a State Division's evaluate of the tumultuous withdrawal from Afghanistan.

McCaul despatched letters on Friday to ask the 5 people to look for a transcribed interview. He's searching for to have them “contact the committee to rearrange” the interviews by Could 22.

“It's essential they converse with the committee at once. As we proceed to collect proof, the Committee will proceed to interview extra present and former administration officers concerned within the planning and execution of the withdrawal," he added.

Since taking the reins of the Home Overseas Affairs Committee, McCaul has criticized the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Again in March, he subpoenaed the State Division to furnish the Kabul dissent cable, which was signed by over two dozen members of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, slamming the administration's preparations for withdrawal.

McCaul has inched nearer to holding Secretary of State Antony Blinken in contempt for defying that demand. The dissent cable got here on July 13, 2021, and preceded the Taliban's toppling of the United States-backed Afghanistan authorities the next month.