Former White House press secretary Jen Psaki will sit down with lawmakers on the House Foreign Affairs Committee as part of its investigation into the Biden administration’s withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan in 2021.
Psaki will appear before lawmakers on July 26 to discuss her role in the withdrawal, as committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX) said she acted as an “authoritative source” while it was being conducted. The scheduled interview comes roughly nine months after McCaul initially requested her cooperation in September.
“The Committee has a vested interest in understanding those diplomatic and information transmission failures, which led to misrepresentations regarding, amongst other things, coordination with allies, contingency planning, the foreseeability of Afghanistan’s collapse, and the safety of Americans and allies in Afghanistan,” McCaul wrote in a letter to Psaki. “As a former public servant, and now, a private citizen in the public sphere, you have a duty to appear before Congress when called upon.”
Although Psaki agreed to sit down to testify, the former press secretary has conditioned her appearance on whether the White House approves her cooperation, according to McCaul. As a result, the committee chairman noted that any “limitations on her appearance” would be treated as a refusal to testify.
McCaul gave Psaki a deadline of June 26 to resolve “the conditionality of your appearance” with the White House. Otherwise, the July 26 interview would be treated as a deposition.
The interview comes after “exhaustive efforts” to obtain her testimony, according to McCaul. The committee first requested her testimony in September, prompting the White House to request the committee “exhaust other means of obtaining the information relevant to our legislative interests before pursuing an interview with you.”
The committee continued its investigation by seeking relevant information from the Department of State and Department of Defense, but McCaul said it was determined Psaki’s “experiences and insights have no substitute.”
The Washington Examiner contacted the White House for comment.
The testimony request comes after McCaul launched the investigation last January when Republicans won the House majority, vowing to look into the decisions made by administration officials during the weeks and months that led up to the military’s withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021.
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The defining images of the U.S. withdrawal were the thousands of Afghans who rushed to the Kabul airport, desperate to get one of the last evacuation flights out of the country. The State Department did not declare the evacuation order until the U.S.-supported Afghan government fell to the Taliban on Aug. 15, 2021, less than three weeks before the intended evacuation date of Sept. 11, which was pushed up to the end of August.
U.S. forces were able to evacuate more than 120,000 people, but thousands of U.S. citizens or Afghans who worked with U.S. forces during the two decades of war were left behind. An ISIS-K terrorist detonated a suicide bomb outside the airport gates on Aug. 26, 2021, killing roughly 170 people, including 13 U.S. service members.