Scoop: GOP chair weighs Psaki subpoena in Afghanistan probe
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Jen Psaki as White House press secretary in 2022. Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images
The Republican chair of a House committee is threatening to subpoena former White House press secretary Jen Psaki if she doesn't schedule an interview with the panel for its probe into the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, according to a letter obtained by Axios.
Why it matters: The Foreign Affairs Committee is expected to release a report this summer on the Biden administration's chaotic exit from Afghanistan in 2021 that left 13 U.S. soldiers dead — and damaged the president's standing in public opinion polls.
- The panel's investigation has revealed inconsistencies between President Biden's public statements and on-the-ground accounts of what happened.
- Its report will arrive just months before the 2024 election.
Zoom in: Psaki gave committee chair Michael McCaul (R-Texas) an opening to re-up his push for an interview after she falsely wrote in her new memoir that Biden hadn't looked at his watch during a ceremony for the U.S. soldiers, who were killed during an explosion at Kabul's airport.
- Photos of Biden checking his watch during a solemn moment have been used by Republicans to try to undermine his image as an empathetic leader.
- After Axios' initial report about the falsehood, Psaki said she would remove those lines in the e-book and future editions.
- McCaul first requested to interview Psaki about Afghanistan last September, but her lawyer deferred to the White House counsel, who rebuffed the committee.
Driving the news: In a letter Tuesday to Psaki's lawyer Emily Loeb — a partner at Jenner & Block — McCaul wrote: "As a private citizen, willing and able to publish a memoir on her tenure as White House Press Secretary, I encourage Ms. Psaki to refrain from relying on thin legal arguments to dodge her responsibility to appear before Congress."
- "The Committee will not tolerate Ms. Psaki's continued obstruction of its critical investigation," McCaul said, noting the panel's power to subpoena individuals to testify.
- He added: "It is troubling that Ms. Psaki seeks to profit off the Afghanistan tragedy, and has felt comfortable writing accounts and making them available to the general public, but refuses to make herself available to Congress."
- Loeb and Psaki, now a star anchor at MSNBC, declined to comment.
The big picture: McCaul's probe has been a headache for the Biden administration.
- In a public hearing in March, the two top U.S. generals in charge of the Afghanistan exit pointed fingers at Biden's State Department for the chaos of the withdrawal.
- "The fundamental mistake, the fundamental flaw was the timing of the State Department," former Joint Chiefs chair Gen. Mark Milley said. "That was too slow and too late."
Witnesses also have contradicted Biden's public claims about the exit.
- Biden told ABC News in 2021 that "no one" advised him to retain a force of 2,500 in Afghanistan, but Milley told the committee that he had advised the president to do just that.
- Several Biden officials have said that no one predicted the Taliban would conquer the country so quickly and prompt the tumult.
- But retired Gen. Austin Scott Miller — the top U.S. general in Afghanistan at the time — told the committee last month that he told Biden officials that security would get "very bad, very fast," according to his testimony released this week.
