The The White House pushed back on a report released Sunday by Republican lawmakers criticizing President Biden’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, calling the report biased and offering “little or nothing new.”

Texas Rep. Mike McCaul, the Republican chairman of the committee, released a GOP-led report that questioned Biden’s claims that his hands were tied on the deal former President Trump had made with the Taliban to set a deadline for the US withdrawal to summer 2021. It also said State Department officials had no plan to help Americans and allies while there were still troops in the region to protect them.

McCaul’s report also noted the failure to adequately respond to terrorist threats in the face of the ISIS-K bombing at the Abbey Gate of Kabul airport that killed 13 U.S. service members and more than 150 Afghan civilians, and that the Taliban likely had access after the withdrawal to $7 billion in abandoned U.S. weapons and up to $57 million in US funds originally given to the Afghan government.

On Monday, White House National Security Council Communications Adviser John Kirby defended himself Biden’s handling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan during a White House briefing.

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Kirby told reporters the GOP report comes two years after their first report, adding, “This one says little or nothing new.”

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He then gave a summary of what he called “actual facts” that he considered important.

“First of all, the day this administration took office, the Taliban were in the strongest position in years. The Afghan government, the weakest,” Kirby said. “The Trump administration cut a deal called the Doha Accord that ordered a full US withdrawal from Afghanistan, and yes, that included Bagram Air Base, by the end of May 2021.”

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Part of the deal was that 5,000 Taliban fighters would be released from prison, and in return the Taliban agreed not to attack American troops, he explained.

Kirby cited testimony from former US Central Command commander General Frank McKenzie, who said the Doha deal had a really damaging effect on the Afghan government and demoralized them.

“They knew right then and there that America was on its way out,” Kirby said. “Yes, in October 2020, then-President Trump ordered his military to rush leave Afghanistan and let everyone go to Christmas that year.

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“President Biden, for his part, faced a stark choice when he took office: Follow the flawed deal and end America’s longest war, or blow up the deal, prolong the war and see a much smaller contingent of US troops back fighting the Taliban” , Kirby added. “He chose the former and was able to buy additional time to prepare for that withdrawal well into the summer, and we as a nation are safer for it.”

Kirby then addressed what he called “falsities” from the report. The first problem he found was that there was actually planning for evacuations starting in the spring of 2021.

Kirby said the Defense Department proposed additional military units in the region so when a decision was made to evacuate, they would be ready to respond.

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He also said there was no point in securing Bagram Air Base during the evacuation because that would have required thousands of additional US troops. It would also have required a “dangerous trek of evacuees” across Taliban territory, making the evacuation even more difficult.

Kirby also mentioned that there was no handing over of American equipment to the Taliban.

“This equipment had been provided to Afghan security forces appropriately and with congressional approval over the course of two decades of war,” he said. “This equipment was left by the Afghan forces when they surrendered or stopped fighting.”

Finally, Kirby told reporters that the Biden administration did not cheat, lie or fail to be transparent during or after the withdrawal.

“We did the best we could every day to keep the American people informed of what was happening,” he said. “We conducted our own after-action reports and shared them with the public as well.”

Fox News Digital’s Landon Mion contributed to this report.

Original article source: The White House is hitting back at the scathing report on Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan