The Trump transition team is compiling a list of senior current and former U.S. military officers who were directly involved in the withdrawal from Afghanistan and exploring whether they could be court-martialed for their involvement, according to a U.S. official and a person familiar with the plan.
Officials working on the transition are considering creating a commission to investigate the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, including gathering information about who was directly involved in the decision-making for the military, how it was carried out, and whether the military leaders could be eligible for charges as serious as treason, the U.S. official and person with knowledge of the plan said.
“They’re taking it very seriously,” the person with knowledge of the plan said. The Trump transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Matt Flynn, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for counternarcotics and global threats, is helping lead the effort, the sources said. It is being framed as a review of how the U.S. first got into the war in Afghanistan and how the U.S. ultimately withdrew.
“Matt Flynn has nothing to do with the Trump transition team, much less leading any review concerning military justice matters,” said Mark S. Zaid, Flynn’s attorney.
In a statement Zaid said that “no one has sought out Mr. Flynn’s views on this hypothetical legal scenario.” NBC News did reach out to multiple officials on the Trump transition team about this story.
“The sources apparently pushing this story appear to be your typical selfish Washington, D.C. insiders seeking to gain better positioning for their own administration jobs,” said an individual with knowledge of the campaign.
President-elect Donald Trump has condemned the withdrawal as a “humiliation” and “the most embarrassing day in the history of our country.”
It is not clear, though, what would legally justify “treason” charges since the military officers were following the orders of President Joe Biden to withdraw all U.S. forces from Afghanistan.
A 2022 independent review by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction blamed both the Trump and Biden administrations for the chaotic U.S. withdrawal in 2021.
Trump first reached an agreement with the Taliban in 2020 to withdraw all U.S. forces from Afghanistan, roughly 13,000 troops, and release 5,000 Taliban fighters from prison. The Biden administration then completed the withdrawal and badly overestimated the ability of Afghan government forces to fight the Taliban on their own.
