House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said a bipartisan pair of lawmakers should not have traveled to Afghanistan this week amid the chaotic and dangerous evacuation of thousands of Americans and Afghans.
“We don’t want anybody to think that this was a good idea and that they should try to follow suit,” the California Democrat told reporters in the Capitol Wednesday.
Pelosi issued a written warning to House lawmakers Tuesday after she learned Reps. Seth Moulton, a Massachusetts Democrat, and Peter Meijer, a Michigan Republican, had traveled to Afghanistan.
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The two lawmakers, both veterans, said in a statement that they took the trip to provide congressional oversight of the much-criticized evacuation, which is unfolding chaotically and with reports that many American citizens are unable to reach Kabul’s airport to be evacuated.
“There is no place in the world right now where oversight matters more,” the two men said in a statement.
They did not travel as an official congressional delegation, which would have required Pelosi’s endorsement.
Moulton later explained on Twitter that the lawmakers secretly traveled on military aircraft to and from the airport.
“We did this visit in secret to reduce risks and impact on the mission, and we insisted on leaving in a plane that was not full in a seat designated for crew so that we didn’t take a seat from someone else,” Moulton said.
Pelosi on Wednesday referred to it as a “freelance” trip and said she issued a written statement shortly after to send a message to lawmakers not to follow their actions.
Pelosi said congressional trips to Kabul would distract from the State Department, which is conducting the evacuation and would also be responsible for protecting lawmakers who show up there.
She has not spoken to either Moulton or Meijer.
“It was not, in my view, a good idea,” Pelosi said of the trip.
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Pelosi, in her Tuesday statement, warned House lawmakers that travel to the region would “unnecessarily divert needed resources from the priority mission of safely and expeditiously evacuating America and Afghans at risk from Afghanistan.”
Moulton called the scene at the airport “indescribable,” and he praised the U.S. military and State Department efforts to help people get out of the country.
“The world has truly never seen anything like what America is doing in Kabul this week — deeply tragic and highly heroic. Fear and desperation at their worst — hope and humanity at their finest,” Moulton said.
