US lawmaker threatens to hold Blinken in contempt over Afghanistan documents

PHOTO CAPTION: Evacuees wait to board a Boeing C-17 Globemaster III during an evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport, Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 23, 2021. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Isaiah Campbell via U.S. Defense Visual Information Distribution Service)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The chair of the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee moved ahead on Thursday with a bid to hold Secretary of State Antony Blinken in contempt of Congress for withholding documents related to the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Republican Representative Michael McCaul said the committee would meet on March 7 to consider a resolution recommending that Blinken be held in contempt "for his continued refusal to comply with a subpoena served by the committee in July."

The House committee has been seeking more information from the State Department for months over the withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021. Republicans - and some Democrats - say there has never been a full accounting of the chaotic operation, in which 13 U.S. service members were killed at Kabul's airport.

State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told a briefing on Thursday that the department was in touch with the foreign affairs committee and would try to resolve the issue before March 7.

The State Department says it has turned over thousands of pages of documents to the committee and made witnesses available for transcribed interviews, while noting that the executive branch has "legitimate confidentiality rights."

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle and Simon Lewis; Editing by Leslie Adler and Diane Craft)