By David Morgan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republican U.S. Senator Rick Scott doubled down on his call to replace the Federal Reserve’s current inspector general with a new, more independent office, following the collapses of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank.

In an opinion column posted on the Fox News website, the Florida Republican also pledged to support legislation to claw back bonuses that media reports say were handed out to Silicon Valley Bank employees hours before the federal government seized the operation.

“The Federal Reserve, the world’s largest and most powerful central bank, does not have a truly independent IG to investigate it. I’m fighting to fix that and will be introducing a bill soon – that I believe will have bipartisan support,” Scott wrote.

The Federal Reserve was not immediately available for comment.

The legislation, which an aide said Scott is expected to introduce on Wednesday, would create a new Federal Reserve inspector general who would be appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

The online column marked the second time in two days that Scott has vowed to push for an independent Fed IG. He also informed Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell of his plans in a letter on Monday.

Republicans and Democrats in Congress have pledged tighter oversight of banking regulators following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, which has been followed by billions of dollars in losses for financial stocks.

The Fed’s current inspector general office was created in the 1970s and reports directly to the Fed board, rather than functioning as a completely independent auditor, as is the case at the Pentagon and other big agencies.

Scott’s action coincides with a two-day meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, a key panel that makes important decisions about interest rates and U.S. money supply.

Scott included a message for Powell, saying the Fed chief should do three things at this week’s meeting: support the creation of an independent IG; “tell us who at the Fed is being fired for its lack of bank oversight, and tell us what changes have been made so this never happens again.” 

Scott, who has been seen as a possible presidential contender, does not sit on any Senate committees that oversee the banking industry or monetary policy.

But the former Florida governor has emerged in the Senate as a leading hardline conservative, who former President Donald Trump has repeatedly nominated as a replacement for Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell.

Scott also authored a plan during the 2022 campaign that called for ending all federal programs after five years. But he had to revise it last month to exclude the popular Social Security and Medicare programs, after weeks of mounting criticism from Democrats and his fellow Republicans alike.

“We need to recognize that there are moments in life when you work with a scalpel and others when you use a hammer. This moment calls for a hammer,” Scott said in the column.

(Reporting by David Morgan; Editing by Scott Malone and Alison Williams)

By David Morgan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republican U.S. Senator Rick Scott doubled down on his call to replace the Federal Reserve’s current inspector general with a new, more independent office, following the collapses of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank.

In an opinion column posted on the Fox News website, the Florida Republican also pledged to support legislation to claw back bonuses that media reports say were handed out to Silicon Valley Bank employees hours before the federal government seized the operation.

“The Federal Reserve, the world’s largest and most powerful central bank, does not have a truly independent IG to investigate it. I’m fighting to fix that and will be introducing a bill soon – that I believe will have bipartisan support,” Scott wrote.

The Federal Reserve was not immediately available for comment.

The legislation, which an aide said Scott is expected to introduce on Wednesday, would create a new Federal Reserve inspector general who would be appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

The online column marked the second time in two days that Scott has vowed to push for an independent Fed IG. He also informed Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell of his plans in a letter on Monday.

Republicans and Democrats in Congress have pledged tighter oversight of banking regulators following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, which has been followed by billions of dollars in losses for financial stocks.

The Fed’s current inspector general office was created in the 1970s and reports directly to the Fed board, rather than functioning as a completely independent auditor, as is the case at the Pentagon and other big agencies.

Scott’s action coincides with a two-day meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, a key panel that makes important decisions about interest rates and U.S. money supply.

Scott included a message for Powell, saying the Fed chief should do three things at this week’s meeting: support the creation of an independent IG; “tell us who at the Fed is being fired for its lack of bank oversight, and tell us what changes have been made so this never happens again.” 

Scott, who has been seen as a possible presidential contender, does not sit on any Senate committees that oversee the banking industry or monetary policy.

But the former Florida governor has emerged in the Senate as a leading hardline conservative, who former President Donald Trump has repeatedly nominated as a replacement for Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell.

Scott also authored a plan during the 2022 campaign that called for ending all federal programs after five years. But he had to revise it last month to exclude the popular Social Security and Medicare programs, after weeks of mounting criticism from Democrats and his fellow Republicans alike.

“We need to recognize that there are moments in life when you work with a scalpel and others when you use a hammer. This moment calls for a hammer,” Scott said in the column.

(Reporting by David Morgan; Editing by Scott Malone and Alison Williams)

By Mike Stone

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Four Republican members of Congress urged U.S. President Joe Biden to send cluster munitions to Ukraine, alleging in a Tuesday letter to the White House that the administration fears doing so would be seen as an escalation by Russia.

Ukraine is seeking the MK-20, an air-delivered cluster bomb, to release its individual explosives from drones, and 155 mm artillery cluster shells, Reuters reported earlier this month. Kyiv had urged members of Congress to press the White House to approve sending the weapons.

The letter criticized Biden for “reluctance to provide Ukraine the right type and amount of long-range fires and maneuver capability to create” a breakthrough against Russian forces.

The letter was signed by Jim Risch, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Roger Wicker, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Mike McCaul, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Mike Rogers the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.

It urged Biden to send the Dual-Purpose Conventional Improved Munitions (DPICM) found in several types of U.S. munitions, including 155 millimeter artillery, GMLRS and ATACMS.

It is by no means certain the Biden administration would sign off on a transfer.

Cluster munitions, banned by more than 120 countries, normally release large numbers of smaller bomblets that can kill indiscriminately over a wide area, threatening civilians.

(Reporting by Mike Stone in Washington; Editing by Marguerita Choy)

By Karen Freifeld and Luc Cohen

NEW YORK (Reuters) -Workers erected barricades around a Manhattan courthouse on Monday as New York City braced for a possible indictment of Donald Trump over an alleged hush-money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels during his 2016 campaign.

It would be the first-ever criminal case against any U.S. president. On Saturday, Trump urged followers on social media to protest what he said was his looming arrest.

In his call for protests, Trump raised concerns for law enforcement that supporters might engage in violence similar to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol in Washington.

Fearing a trap, however, several far-right grassroots groups have opted not to heed his call, security analysts said.

A grand jury, which heard further testimony on Monday, could bring charges as soon as this week. Trump, who is seeking the Republican nomination for the White House again in 2024, had predicted he would be arrested on Tuesday.

On Monday the grand jury heard from a witness, lawyer Robert Costello, who said Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen had handled the hush-money payments without Trump’s involvement.

“Michael Cohen decided on his own – that’s what he told us – on his own, to see if he could take care of this,” Costello told reporters after testifying to the grand jury at Trump’s lawyers’ request.

Cohen, who testified twice before the grand jury, has said publicly Trump directed him to make the payments on Trump’s behalf.

An indictment could hurt Trump’s comeback attempt. Some 44% of Republicans say he should drop out of the presidential race if he is indicted, according to a seven-day Reuters/Ipsos poll that concluded on Monday.

The investigation by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is one of several legal challenges facing Trump. His office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to federal campaign finance violations tied to his arranging payments to Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, and another woman in exchange for their silence about affairs they claimed with Trump.

Trump has denied that any such affairs took place

The Manhattan District Attorney’s office had asked that Cohen be available as a rebuttal witness, but he was told on Monday afternoon that his testimony was not needed, according to his lawyer Lanny Davis. Cohen told MSNBC he had not been asked to return on Wednesday.

NO SIGN OF UNREST

New York Mayor Eric Adams told reporters police were monitoring social media and keeping an eye out for “inappropriate actions” in the city. The New York Police Department said there were no known credible threats.

If charged, Trump would likely have to travel from his Florida home for fingerprinting and other processing. Law enforcement officials met on Monday to discuss the logistics, several media outlets reported.

Sources have said Bragg’s office was presenting evidence to a grand jury about a $130,000 payment made to Daniels in the final weeks of the 2016 campaign.

Trump’s fellow Republicans have widely criticized the probe as politically motivated.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Trump’s rival for the Republican presidential nomination, said on Monday Bragg was imposing a “political agenda” that compromised the rule of law, but he also took a veiled swipe at Trump.

“I don’t know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair,” he told reporters.

Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives launched an investigation of Bragg’s office with a letter seeking communications, documents and testimony related to the probe.

Trump and other Republicans have also said the Manhattan District Attorney’s office should focus more on tackling crime.

Asked to comment on the letter, a spokesperson for the DA’s office, citing statistics that homicides and shootings were down this year, said:

“We will not be intimidated by attempts to undermine the justice process, nor will we let baseless accusations deter us from fairly applying the law.”

Trump was impeached twice by the House during his presidency, once in 2019 over his conduct regarding Ukraine and again in 2021 over the attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters. He was acquitted by the Senate both times.

SEVERAL MORE LEGAL CHALLENGES REMAIN

Bragg won a conviction last December against Trump’s business on tax fraud charges.

But legal analysts say the hush-money case may be more difficult. Bragg’s office will have to prove that Trump intended to commit a crime, and his lawyers will likely employ a range of counterattacks to try to get the case dismissed, experts say.

Trump, meanwhile, has to contend with other legal challenges, raising the possibility he will have to shuttle between campaign stops and courtrooms before the November 2024 election.

Trump’s lawyers on Monday asked a Georgia court to quash a special grand jury report detailing its investigation into his alleged efforts to overturn his 2020 statewide election defeat.

The filing in Fulton County Superior Court also seeks to have the county district attorney, Fani Willis, recused from the case, arguing her media appearances and social media posts demonstrated bias against Trump.

Trump is also seeking to delay a civil fraud trial, scheduled for Oct. 2, brought by the New York attorney general that alleges a decade-long scheme to manipulate the value of his assets to win better terms from bankers and insurers.

Trump faces two civil trials involving former magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll, who claims that Trump defamed her by denying he raped her. A federal judge on Monday denied a request from both sides to combine the two cases into one.

(Additional reporting by Kaniska Singh, Jason Lange, David Morgan and Costas Pitas; Writing by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Scott Malone, Howard Goller and Lincoln Feast.)

By Karen Freifeld

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A New York judge on Tuesday rejected former U.S. President Donald Trump’s bid to delay the scheduled Oct. 2 trial in state Attorney General Letitia James’ civil fraud lawsuit, calling the date “written in stone.”

Justice Arthur Engoron in Supreme Court in Manhattan agreed to requests by Trump and other defendants to push back some deadlines for gathering evidence.

“You can move anything else in between,” the judge told lawyers at a two-hour hearing, which was delayed by a bomb scare. “I don’t want to move that trial date.”

The schedule means the former president could face trial in James’ case just two blocks from the Manhattan criminal court building where he is expecting to be indicted for covering up a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.

Both cases come during Trump’s third White House run, in which he is a leading Republican candidate.

James sued Trump, three of his adult children, the Trump Organization and others last September over an alleged decade-long scheme to manipulate more than 200 asset valuations and Trump’s net worth, to win better terms from banks and insurers.

The attorney general has long accused Trump of stalling to delay her case.

On Monday, she accused the Trump Organization’s accounting firm of failing to produce documents she subpoenaed and improperly asserting privilege.

Trump has called James’ case a partisan witch hunt.

He had originally sought a delay that would have likely pushed any trial to the spring of 2024, when the race to become the Republican presidential nominee might be sewn up.

James countered that her office had already turned over “enormous” quantities of evidence to the defendants, enough to prevent any trial from “becoming a game of surprise.”

Engoron also said many disputes are easy to resolve, including whether Trump overstated the value of his Trump Tower penthouse apartment by inflating its size.

“A triplex apartment is worth less money if is 11,000 square feet than if it is 30,000 square feet,” he said. “You do not need to be an expert … to know these things. You don’t even need a high school diploma.” 

Among the other defendants are Trump’s adult children Donald Jr., Eric and Ivanka, and the jailed former Trump Organization chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg.

Christopher Kise, a lawyer for Trump, said the defendants’ confidence is growing as they learn more about James’ case.

“Once everybody knows exactly what happened, then they’re going to see that President Trump has done absolutely nothing wrong,” he said.

Asked later by a Reuters reporter about the trial date being set in stone, Kise said: “For now, it is.”

(Reporting by Karen Freifeld in New York; Additional reporting by Jonathan Stempel; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

By Karen Freifeld

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A New York judge on Tuesday rejected former U.S. President Donald Trump’s bid to delay the scheduled Oct. 2 trial in state Attorney General Letitia James’ civil fraud lawsuit, calling the date “written in stone.”

Justice Arthur Engoron in Supreme Court in Manhattan agreed to requests by Trump and other defendants to push back some deadlines for gathering evidence.

“You can move anything else in between,” the judge told lawyers at a two-hour hearing, which was delayed by a bomb scare. “I don’t want to move that trial date.”

The schedule means the former president could face trial in James’ case just two blocks from the Manhattan criminal court building where he is expecting to be indicted for covering up a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.

Both cases come during Trump’s third White House run, in which he is a leading Republican candidate.

James sued Trump, three of his adult children, the Trump Organization and others last September over an alleged decade-long scheme to manipulate more than 200 asset valuations and Trump’s net worth, to win better terms from banks and insurers.

The attorney general has long accused Trump of stalling to delay her case.

On Monday, she accused the Trump Organization’s accounting firm of failing to produce documents she subpoenaed and improperly asserting privilege.

Trump has called James’ case a partisan witch hunt.

He had originally sought a delay that would have likely pushed any trial to the spring of 2024, when the race to become the Republican presidential nominee might be sewn up.

James countered that her office had already turned over “enormous” quantities of evidence to the defendants, enough to prevent any trial from “becoming a game of surprise.”

Engoron also said many disputes are easy to resolve, including whether Trump overstated the value of his Trump Tower penthouse apartment by inflating its size.

“A triplex apartment is worth less money if is 11,000 square feet than if it is 30,000 square feet,” he said. “You do not need to be an expert … to know these things. You don’t even need a high school diploma.” 

Among the other defendants are Trump’s adult children Donald Jr., Eric and Ivanka, and the jailed former Trump Organization chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg.

Christopher Kise, a lawyer for Trump, said the defendants’ confidence is growing as they learn more about James’ case.

“Once everybody knows exactly what happened, then they’re going to see that President Trump has done absolutely nothing wrong,” he said.

Asked later by a Reuters reporter about the trial date being set in stone, Kise said: “For now, it is.”

(Reporting by Karen Freifeld in New York; Additional reporting by Jonathan Stempel; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

By Karen Freifeld and Luc Cohen

NEW YORK (Reuters) -Workers erected barricades around a Manhattan courthouse on Monday as New York City braced for a possible indictment of Donald Trump over an alleged hush-money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels during his 2016 campaign.

It would be the first-ever criminal case against any U.S. president. On Saturday, Trump urged followers on social media to protest what he said was his looming arrest.

In his call for protests, Trump raised concerns for law enforcement that supporters might engage in violence similar to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol in Washington.

Fearing a trap, however, several far-right grassroots groups have opted not to heed his call, security analysts said.

A grand jury, which heard further testimony on Monday, could bring charges as soon as this week. Trump, who is seeking the Republican nomination for the White House again in 2024, had predicted he would be arrested on Tuesday.

On Monday the grand jury heard from a witness, lawyer Robert Costello, who said Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen had handled the hush-money payments without Trump’s involvement.

“Michael Cohen decided on his own – that’s what he told us – on his own, to see if he could take care of this,” Costello told reporters after testifying to the grand jury at Trump’s lawyers’ request.

Cohen, who testified twice before the grand jury, has said publicly Trump directed him to make the payments on Trump’s behalf.

An indictment could hurt Trump’s comeback attempt. Some 44% of Republicans say he should drop out of the presidential race if he is indicted, according to a seven-day Reuters/Ipsos poll that concluded on Monday.

The investigation by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is one of several legal challenges facing Trump. His office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to federal campaign finance violations tied to his arranging payments to Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, and another woman in exchange for their silence about affairs they claimed with Trump.

Trump has denied that any such affairs took place

The Manhattan District Attorney’s office had asked that Cohen be available as a rebuttal witness, but he was told on Monday afternoon that his testimony was not needed, according to his lawyer Lanny Davis. Cohen told MSNBC he had not been asked to return on Wednesday.

NO SIGN OF UNREST

New York Mayor Eric Adams told reporters police were monitoring social media and keeping an eye out for “inappropriate actions” in the city. The New York Police Department said there were no known credible threats.

If charged, Trump would likely have to travel from his Florida home for fingerprinting and other processing. Law enforcement officials met on Monday to discuss the logistics, several media outlets reported.

Sources have said Bragg’s office was presenting evidence to a grand jury about a $130,000 payment made to Daniels in the final weeks of the 2016 campaign.

Trump’s fellow Republicans have widely criticized the probe as politically motivated.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Trump’s rival for the Republican presidential nomination, said on Monday Bragg was imposing a “political agenda” that compromised the rule of law, but he also took a veiled swipe at Trump.

“I don’t know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair,” he told reporters.

Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives launched an investigation of Bragg’s office with a letter seeking communications, documents and testimony related to the probe.

Trump and other Republicans have also said the Manhattan District Attorney’s office should focus more on tackling crime.

Asked to comment on the letter, a spokesperson for the DA’s office, citing statistics that homicides and shootings were down this year, said:

“We will not be intimidated by attempts to undermine the justice process, nor will we let baseless accusations deter us from fairly applying the law.”

Trump was impeached twice by the House during his presidency, once in 2019 over his conduct regarding Ukraine and again in 2021 over the attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters. He was acquitted by the Senate both times.

SEVERAL MORE LEGAL CHALLENGES REMAIN

Bragg won a conviction last December against Trump’s business on tax fraud charges.

But legal analysts say the hush-money case may be more difficult. Bragg’s office will have to prove that Trump intended to commit a crime, and his lawyers will likely employ a range of counterattacks to try to get the case dismissed, experts say.

Trump, meanwhile, has to contend with other legal challenges, raising the possibility he will have to shuttle between campaign stops and courtrooms before the November 2024 election.

Trump’s lawyers on Monday asked a Georgia court to quash a special grand jury report detailing its investigation into his alleged efforts to overturn his 2020 statewide election defeat.

The filing in Fulton County Superior Court also seeks to have the county district attorney, Fani Willis, recused from the case, arguing her media appearances and social media posts demonstrated bias against Trump.

Trump is also seeking to delay a civil fraud trial, scheduled for Oct. 2, brought by the New York attorney general that alleges a decade-long scheme to manipulate the value of his assets to win better terms from bankers and insurers.

Trump faces two civil trials involving former magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll, who claims that Trump defamed her by denying he raped her. A federal judge on Monday denied a request from both sides to combine the two cases into one.

(Additional reporting by Kaniska Singh, Jason Lange, David Morgan and Costas Pitas; Writing by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Scott Malone, Howard Goller and Lincoln Feast.)

By Nathan Layne and Gram Slattery

(Reuters) -Donald Trump will try to turn any indictment to his advantage by stoking anger among core supporters over what they see as the weaponization of the justice system, though it may also push more Republicans tired of the drama around him to look for another presidential candidate.

A Manhattan grand jury could bring charges as soon as this week against the former Republican president for alleged hush money payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels during his 2016 presidential campaign. Trump has denied having an affair with Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford.

While the prosecution of a former president is unprecedented in U.S. history and places Trump in legal peril, it will likely be viewed by his most loyal supporters as politically motivated and only harden their determination to back him in the 2024 Republican primary, party officials, strategists and political analysts told Reuters.

“I think this will strengthen the resolve of his supporters,” said Ford O’Connell, a Republican strategist who represented Trump in many media appearances during the 2020 presidential campaign.

But to win the party’s nomination, Trump will likely have to broaden his support beyond the 25%-30% of the Republican electorate generally thought to be in his corner no matter what, especially if the field of Republican candidates narrows in the coming months. An indictment could make it difficult for him to broaden his appeal.

Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said some Republicans could be swayed by the charges to back Florida Governor Ron DeSantis or another potential candidate without Trump’s legal baggage, which has grown considerably since he left the White House in 2021.

“It’s not good for Trump, the question is how bad for Trump it is,” said Sabato. “There could be multiple indictments … it begins to add up to a major problem.”

Trump’s campaign has accused the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, as well as prosecutors pursuing separate cases against him in Georgia and at the federal level, of doing the bidding of Democrats out to stop his re-election campaign.

People close to Trump said his campaign would seek to frame the indictment as proof that all prosecutions – including his two impeachments in Congress – are unjustified attempts by the “Deep State” to undermine him and his supporters.

Trump will have more social media outlets to get his message across after YouTube became the latest platform to reinstate him on Friday. Trump was cut off from YouTube, Facebook and Twitter following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack by his supporters on the U.S. Capitol. He has now been reinstated on all three, giving him a powerful megaphone to rally his base, as he did effectively during his 2016 White House run.

It is unclear how Trump’s rivals for the Republican nomination will approach the indictment, although several have already made clear they view any attempt to charge Trump as politically motivated.

Sam DeMarco, chair of the Republican Party in Pennsylvania’s Allegheny County, said candidates will likely allude to the need for less drama without explicitly calling Trump out.

DeSantis got a taste of that on Monday when he criticized what he said was the politicization of the Manhattan DA’s office but also took a veiled swipe at his rival. Trump responded aggressively with an innuendo-filled post on his Truth Social platform.

‘TEFLON DON’

DeMarco said Republicans would view the Manhattan indictment as political, given that federal prosecutors reviewed the Daniels case in 2018 and decided not to charge Trump, although it is Justice Department policy not to indict a sitting president.

Republicans would take a similar view of any charges arising out of the ongoing investigation in Fulton County, Georgia, into Trump’s effort to overturn his 2020 loss to Democrat Joe Biden there, said DeMarco, who plans to vote for DeSantis should he run.

Trump has defied predictions of his demise numerous times since he launched his bid for the White House in 2015. Sometimes called “Teflon Don” for his record of skirting accountability, Trump once bragged that he could gun down someone in the middle of Manhattan and not face consequences.

Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016 despite the emergence of the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape in which he made vulgar comments about women. And in 2018, when he was president, he paid no apparent political price for the Stormy Daniels affair, even as his lawyer went to prison for arranging the payments and pointed the finger at Trump.

Trump remains the front-runner in the 2024 Republican field, with the support of 44% of Republicans in a Reuters/Ipsos poll completed on Monday, ahead of DeSantis’ 30% support.

(Reporting by Nathan Layne in Wilton, Connecticut, and Gram Slattery in Washington; Editing by Ross Colvin, Daniel Wallis and Lisa Shumaker)

By Patricia Zengerle

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The Republican chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee threatened to issue a subpoena if the State Department does not produce documents it has requested related to the August 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, the committee said on Tuesday.

Representative Michael McCaul sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken requesting the information before Blinken’s testimony to the committee on Thursday.

The letter, dated March 20, noted that McCaul had sent a comprehensive document request on the withdrawal on Jan. 12, and a follow-up letter on March 3, among other requests.

The State Department generally does not comment on its correspondence with Congress, but is “committed to working with Congress to appropriately accommodate their legitimate need for information to help them conduct oversight for legislative purposes,” a spokesperson said.

Blinken is due to testify to congressional committees in both the Senate and House this week.

Republicans have launched a series of investigations of Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration since they took control of the House in January.

McCaul had said even before becoming committee chairman that he wants to look into the messy withdrawal from Afghanistan and events in the country since, noting that there has never been a full accounting of the chaotic operation, in which 13 U.S. service members were killed at Kabul’s airport.

Hundreds of U.S. citizens and many thousands of Afghans who had worked with American forces were left behind.

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle, additional reporting by Simon Lewis; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Sandra Maler)

By Patricia Zengerle

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The Republican chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee threatened to issue a subpoena if the State Department does not produce documents it has requested related to the August 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, the committee said on Tuesday.

Representative Michael McCaul sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken requesting the information before Blinken’s testimony to the committee on Thursday.

The letter, dated March 20, noted that McCaul had sent a comprehensive document request on the withdrawal on Jan. 12, and a follow-up letter on March 3, among other requests.

The State Department generally does not comment on its correspondence with Congress, but is “committed to working with Congress to appropriately accommodate their legitimate need for information to help them conduct oversight for legislative purposes,” a spokesperson said.

Blinken is due to testify to congressional committees in both the Senate and House this week.

Republicans have launched a series of investigations of Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration since they took control of the House in January.

McCaul had said even before becoming committee chairman that he wants to look into the messy withdrawal from Afghanistan and events in the country since, noting that there has never been a full accounting of the chaotic operation, in which 13 U.S. service members were killed at Kabul’s airport.

Hundreds of U.S. citizens and many thousands of Afghans who had worked with American forces were left behind.

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle, additional reporting by Simon Lewis; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Sandra Maler)