OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Texas Republican Rep. Michael McCaul is planning to file contempt of Congress charges against Secretary of State Antony Blinken this month after the top Biden administration official has refused to comply with a series of subpoenas.
McCaul, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has attempted to have Blinken come before the committee numerous times. Now, the top Republican says he plans to introduce the contempt charge on May 24. It will then likely move to the House floor for a full vote by early June.
“I don’t take this lightly because a secretary of State’s never been held in contempt by Congress before,” McCaul told Fox News Monday evening. “And I think the secretary realizes that and the gravity. They probably prefer not to go down this route as well. But if they do not comply, we’re prepared to move forward next week with markup for resolution of contempt.”
“Even if passed by the House, the contempt charge would largely be a symbolic move, as President Biden’s Justice Department would likely decline to prosecute the case. McCaul first floated the possibility of a criminal contempt charge last week. Blinken and the State Department have blown past multiple deadlines to provide documents relating to President Biden’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan in recent months,” Fox News reported.
“The Department is now in violation of its legal obligation to produce these documents and must do so immediately,” McCaul wrote last week. “Should the Department fail to comply with its legal obligation, 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.”
“McCaul and his fellow Republicans seek access to materials, including a dissent report from the U.S. Embassy in Kabul dated just before Biden’s withdrawal plans were set in motion. Dissent reports detail any misgivings U.S. officials may have with a current plan of action. Blinken blew past the original deadline to supply the documents in March, then again in April when McCaul pushed back the deadline. McCaul set his latest line in the sand on May 1, and Blinken again refused to provide the documents,” the report added.
House Foreign Affairs chair threatens to hold Antony Blinken in contempt over Afghanistan cable | Just The News https://t.co/U3k47yuvK8
— John Solomon (@jsolomonReports) May 16, 2023
The Biden administration is under heavy fire this week on many fronts.
The FBI was forced to make a big admission after Special Counsel John Durham released the findings on the years-long investigation into former President Donald Trump and alleged Russian collusion.
Durham found the FBI used “uncorroborated intelligence” when it launched its investigation into Trump before the 2016 presidential election and that agents failed repeatedly to maintain “strict fidelity to the law” throughout the probe.
Soon after the report was made available to the public, the FBI responded by acknowledging there were several errors made in 2016. The bureau also conceded that the findings in Durham’s report are accurate.
The Daily Caller noted crucial findings in the report about Hillary Clinton:
The report noted that the FBI received intelligence that Hillary Clinton’s campaign approved “a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services,” specifically one that involved “tying him to Putin and the Russians’ hacking of the Democratic National Committee” to distract the public from her email scandals. It notes that President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and FBI Director James Comey were personally briefed on Clinton’s scheme, known as the “Clinton Plan” in the report, by CIA Director John Brennan, who recorded mentioning the plan in his handwritten notes.
The “Clinton Plan” was obtained by the FBI while it was relying on the “Steele Dossier,” a discredited report of lurid allegations of Trump’s personal sexual activity, which the FBI knew was being funded and promoted by the Clinton campaign, according to the report. Durham quotes information from a meeting between the Dossier’s author, former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele, and FBI agents, as well as texts between FBI officials, to demonstrate that the agents knew the evidence was connected to Clinton.
Durham’s report also found that the FBI and U.S. Department of Justice wasted little time to investigate Trump and that there was a “notable departure” from the way it resisted efforts to investigate claims against Clinton’s campaign.
The FBI briefed Clinton staffers on the information of possible threats aimed at the Clinton campaign but ignored intelligence it received from “a trusted foreign source pointing to a Clinton campaign plan to vilify Trump by tying him to Vladimir Putin so as to divert attention from her own concerns relating to her use of a private email server.”
