Republicans in the House are pressing President Joe Biden on his handling of the troop withdrawal from Afghanistan and its fall to the Taliban by using the same tactics that Democrats used against former President Donald Trump in the run-up to his first impeachment trial.
Arizona Republican Rep. Andy Biggs sent a letter to Biden on Tuesday requesting the transcript of a call between him and former Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani in which Biden urged him to address “perception” problems.
Some Republicans believe the July 23 call indicates that Biden had information that a quick Taliban takeover was likely if U.S. troops left — despite the administration indicating that it believed the Afghan government would hold long enough to evacuate all Americans and their allies from the country over months or even longer after the troops left.
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“President Biden urged Former President Ashraf Ghani to lie to Americans and the world. He wanted Ghani to ‘change perception’ of the Taliban’s rapid takeover of the country,” Biggs said in a statement. “The American people are tired of being lied to by this administration and deserve to know if President Biden pressured a foreign official to spread misinformation. I call on him to release the full transcript of his call with President Ghani and let the public be the judge.”
The focus on the call is remarkably similar to Democrats’ reaction to a 2019 call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in which Trump urged working with his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani to investigate the current president’s son, Hunter Biden. The call, a transcript of which was eventually released by Trump, led to the House Democrats impeaching Trump later in the year.
Biggs is not the only Republican to call for the Biden-Ghani transcript release. Last week, New York Rep. Claudia Tenney was joined by 26 of her colleagues, including No. 3 House Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, in calling for a full transcript.
“This damning phone call further erodes your credibility and the confidence of the American people in your ability to lead,” they wrote, so “Congress can determine the degree to which you may have deliberately misled the American people leading up to and during this disastrously executed operation.”
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a Republican from California, has also centered his attention on the Biden-Ghani call, saying last week that the president “tried to pressure” Ghani and that the call “opens up a lot more questions that deserve answers.”
The July 23 call took place weeks before Ghani fled the country as the Taliban took control of Afghanistan.
“I need not tell you the perception around the world and in parts of Afghanistan, I believe, is that things are not going well in terms of the fight against the Taliban,” Biden said, according to a Reuters report. “And there is a need, whether it is true or not, there is a need to project a different picture.”
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He suggested that if Ghani and other Afghan leaders hold a press conference to announce a new military strategy, “that will change perception, and that will change an awful lot, I think.”
Inquiries into the call come as a wave of Republicans have called for Biden to resign or be impeached over his handling of the withdrawal, particularly in light of an Islamic State bomber killing 13 U.S. service members outside the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, during the chaotic evacuation effort.
