Former White House press secretary and current MSNBC host Jen Psaki may potentially face a subpoena from the House Foreign Affairs Committee due to a false claim made about President Joe Biden in her book.
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX) is contemplating issuing a subpoena to Psaki if she does not agree to an interview with the committee for its probe into the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. This was confirmed by the committee’s spokesperson to Truth Voices. The renewed call follows Psaki’s inclusion of an inaccuracy in her book regarding Biden’s behavior at a ceremony for U.S. soldiers killed during the withdrawal.
“As a private citizen, willing and able to publish a memoir on her tenure as White House Press Secretary, I encourage Ms. Psaki to refrain from relying on thin legal arguments to dodge her responsibility to appear before Congress,” McCaul wrote to Psaki’s lawyer Emily Loeb on Tuesday.
“The Committee will not tolerate Ms. Psaki’s continued obstruction of its critical investigation,” McCaul said.
In her book, Psaki claimed Biden did not look at his watch during the ceremony for soldiers. However, photographs from the Associated Press show he did look at his watch. Psaki has stated she will remove those lines from future reprints and the ebook.
“[A] detail in a few lines of the book about the exact number of times he looked at his watch will be removed in future reprints and the ebook,” Psaki said in a statement addressing the falsehood.
The committee attempted to interview Psaki last September, but at the time, Psaki, who was still employed at the White House, deferred to the White House counsel, which declined.
“It is troubling that Ms. Psaki seeks to profit off the Afghanistan tragedy, and has felt comfortable writing accounts and making them available to the general public, but refuses to make herself available to Congress,” McCaul’s letter stated.
