Rep. Mac Thornberry (R., Texas), chair of the House Armed Services Committee, said Thursday that President Obama "clearly broke the law" by swapping five Taliban prisoners in exchange for American captive Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl in 2014.
Thornberry’s comments came in an announcement of the committee’s congressional report on the controversial prisoner swap, which he and other lawmakers in the committee’s Republican majority had been investigating for a year and a half.
The report concluded that the Obama administration violated several federal laws with the prisoner swap and also suggests that the president authorized it in order to advance his goal of shutting down the military prison at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, where the Taliban prisoners were held.
"Leading up to the transfer, Department of Defense officials misled Congress as to the status of negotiations. Pentagon officials best positioned to assess the national security risks were left out of the process, which increases the chances of dangerous consequences from the transfer," Thornberry said in a statement Thursday.
"It is irresponsible to put these terrorists that much closer to the battlefield to settle a campaign promise and unconscionable to mislead Congress in the process."
Investigators concluded that the prisoner transfer violated the 2014 National Defense Authorization Act and other federal laws because the Pentagon did not notify Congress 30 days in advance before making the swap.
House Republicans on the Armed Services Committee also said that Obama transferred the five prisoners to Qatar in exchange for Bergdahl with the ulterior motive of reducing the prison population at Guantanamo Bay in his effort to eventually shutter the facility.
"The effort to transfer the Taliban Five was not merely a mechanism to recover a captive U.S. serviceman. ... When President Obama assumed office and empaneled his own review of GTMO detainees, that interagency body determined that 48 detainees should not leave U.S. custody. As the administration entered its second term, the committee believes that this posed a particular challenge: how to rid the facility of detainees the president’s own designees believed could not be readily sent elsewhere," the report read.
"The Taliban Five transfer became cloaked as a component of an otherwise salutary prisoner recovery effort. Doing so allowed the administration to rid itself of five of the most dangerous and problematic detainees (other than the 9/11 conspirators who are subject to criminal proceedings) who the administration would otherwise have great difficulty relocating because of the administration’s own prior recommendation to keep them in detention."
Obama has continued to press forward with his plan to close Guantanamo despite criticism and increased national security concerns, threatening to use executive action to shutter the prison.
The committee’s investigation involved the review of 4,000 pages of documents, more than a dozen interviews, and trips to Guantanamo Bay and Qatar.
Following Bergdahl’s release, it was revealed that he disappeared in 2009 while serving in Afghanistan after expressing opposition to the war. He currently faces charges for desertion and misbehavior before the enemy.
Democrats on the committee penned their own dissent to the report, calling it "an expression of shrill demagoguery, contrary to the interests of national security, and beneath the dignity of the House Armed Services Committee," according to the Washington Post.