The incoming president’s team has dismissed the report as gossip from “selfish Washington DC insiders”

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US Army paratroopers with the XVIII Airborne Corp assist in the evacuation of non-combatants at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, August 21, 2021 ©  Getty Images / US Army

US President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team is compiling a list of military officers to be court-martialed for their role in the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, NBC News has reported. According to the network’s sources, charges as serious as treason are being considered.

The effort is being spearheaded by Matt Flynn, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for counternarcotics, the network reported on Sunday, citing a US official and an anonymous “person familiar with the plan.” According to these sources, Flynn will lead a commission examining how the US got into the two-decade war in the first place, and how the withdrawal was carried out.

“They’re taking it very seriously,” the second source said, adding, “they want to set an example.”

The first source said that some commanders may be recalled to active duty to face charges.

 

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Trump struck a deal with the Taliban in 2020, agreeing to pull the US’ roughly 13,000 troops out of Afghanistan within a year and free 5,000 Taliban prisoners if the Afghan militants stood down and let the withdrawal proceed peacefully. After President Joe Biden pushed the withdrawal date back by three months, the Taliban considered the agreement broken and embarked on a lightning-fast reconquest of Afghanistan.

As the militants closed in on Kabul, Biden hurriedly withdrew US forces, leaving some civilian workers stranded and tens of billions of dollars’ worth of military equipment in Taliban hands. The withdrawal culminated in a suicide bombing at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport, which killed 13 American service members and 170 civilians.

Trump has repeatedly referred to the withdrawal as a “humiliation” and “the most embarrassing day in the history of our country.” His nominee for secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, has used similar language to castigate the military brass in charge of the operation.

“These generals lied. They mismanaged. They violated their oath. They failed. They disgraced our troops, and our nation. They got people killed, unnecessarily,” he wrote this year in his book, ‘The War on Warriors’. “And, to this moment, they keep their jobs. Worse, they continue to actively erode our military and its values.” 

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Flynn, however, denies any involvement in the supposed plan. “Matt Flynn has nothing to do with the Trump transition team, much less leading any review concerning military justice matters,” his attorney told NBC, adding that “no one has sought out Mr. Flynn’s views on this hypothetical legal scenario.”

“The sources apparently pushing this story appear to be your typical selfish Washington DC insiders seeking to gain better positioning for their own administration jobs,” a source close to Trump’s campaign told the network.