House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman wants floor vote on Blinken contempt by early June

The House Foreign Affairs Committee plans to move forward with holding Secretary of State Antony Blinken in contempt of Congress for failing to comply with a congressional subpoena. The committee is aiming for a floor vote in early June, the panel's Republican chairman told CBS News.

"It's a path I would rather not take, but it's necessary," committee Chairman Michael McCaul said in an interview on the eve of the May 11 deadline to provide State Department records to the House Committee. 

The GOP-led committee issued a subpoena in late March for an internal confidential State Department document known as a "dissent cable," which had been written by 23 of the department's employees in Kabul, Afghanistan, that warned, according to the Wall Street Journal, that Kabul would fall after the Biden administration's planned withdrawal deadline of Aug. 31, 2021. The Journal's report also said that the cable pointed out the Taliban was gaining territory quickly and that the cable suggested ways of speeding up the evacuation.