GOP report on Afghanistan withdrawal faults Biden and could add fuel to presidential debate

A report by Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee claims that the Biden administration prioritized "optics" over safety and misled the American people during the deadly withdrawal of U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

"It could have been prevented if the State Department did its job by law and executed the plan of evacuation," Rep. Michael McCaul, who chairs the Republican-led panel, said Sunday on Face the Nation. "They left these 13 service men and women hanging out to dry."

Democrats on the committee said they were not involved in producing the report, and disagreed with its findings.

Since the chaotic scene in Kabul in 2021 — when a suicide bomber killed more than 100 Afghans trying to flee the Taliban, as well as 13 of the U.S. service members trying to help them — Republicans have frequently criticized President Biden for how the administration handled the evacuation.

Former President Donald Trump has turned the attack on Vice President Harris in the election, as the three-year anniversary passed on Aug. 30. The White House rejects the claim of mismanagement and notes that former President Donald Trump set the withdrawal in motion when his administration made a widely criticized deal with the Taliban in 2020, known as the Doha Agreement.

The report comes after years of investigation and interviews. The panel said the Biden administration determined it would withdraw from Afghanistan with or without the Doha Agreement — the conditions set for the Taliban to precipitate the removal of U.S. forces.

Committee Republicans also claimed that the chaotic withdrawal "degraded" U.S. national security.

The report's release comes a day before the first presidential debate between Harris and Trump. Harris' name is mentioned 28 times in the report's executive summary, while Trump's name is cited twice. McCaul told CBS News the timing wasn't politically motivated.

"Why is it important right now?" McCaul said. "Because the foreign policy's at stake. What happened after Afghanistan impacted the world."

Democratic Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, ranking-member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, wasn't convinced. In a memo to Democrats on the panel Monday, Meeks wrote that Republicans "did not involve the Minority in this report, nor have they even provided us a draft copy" and said they have taken "pains to avoid facts involving former President Trump" who initiated the withdrawal in 2020.

The memo stated Republicans members have "attempted to downplay or twist the facts" of the Afghanistan withdrawal for political purposes. Further, Meeks defended President Biden's handling of the removal.

"President Trump initiated a withdrawal that was irreversible without sending significantly more American troops to Afghanistan to face renewed combat with the Taliban," Meeks said. "All witnesses who testified on this issue agreed that the United States would have faced renewed combat with the Taliban had we not continued the withdrawal. Rather than send more Americans to fight a war in Afghanistan, President Biden decided to end it."

The White House reiterated that Biden "inherited an untenable position" in a statement to NPR, and said that ending the war, rather than ramping up troops, was "the right thing to do."

“Everything we have seen and heard of Chairman McCaul’s latest partisan report shows that it is based on cherry-picked facts, inaccurate characterizations, and pre-existing biases that have plagued this investigation from the start," Sharon Yang, White House spokesperson for oversight and investigations, said.

Trump signed the deal that set the withdrawal in motion, and Biden saw that through, but as NPR’s Tom Bowman and Quil Lawrence have reported, failures in Afghanistan date back 20 years across four U.S. administrations.

McCaul told CBS News on Sunday that his investigation of the Afghanistan withdrawal doesn't end here and will go "well after the election."