House Armed Services chairman responds after Defense secretary reverses 9/11 plea deal
FIRST ON FOX: House Armed Services Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Ala., told Fox News Digital his committee will continue to probe a scrapped plea deal with the alleged terrorists behind the Sept. 11 World Trade Center attacks.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Friday stunningly revoked a controversial plea deal that would have reportedly taken the death penalty off the table for 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin 'Attash, and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi, who are awaiting trial in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The announcement came after House Republicans on the Armed Services and Oversight committees separately launched investigations into the circumstances of the plea agreement.
"I appreciate that Secretary Austin listened to my concerns and reversed this horrible decision," Rogers told Fox News Digital on Saturday. "However, this plea deal should have never occurred. I still expect the Secretary to provide HASC with answers on how this happened."
The chairman wrote to Austin on Thursday demanding documents related to the plea deal, including "all documents and communications containing terms, conditions, agreements, side-deals, or any mutually developed, related, conditional, or linked agreements with any party relating to terms and conditions of the plea agreements."
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The GOP committee chairman also asked for records of communications spanning the Biden administration regarding the plea deal, which he called "unconscionable."
"I, along with much of our nation and Congress, are deeply shocked and angered by news that the terrorist mastermind and his associates who planned the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, which killed nearly 3000 innocent people, were offered a plea deal," Rogers wrote in the letter, first obtained by Fox News Digital.
"Tragically, the news is a 'gut punch' to many of the victims’ families."
Rogers gave the Defense Department an Aug. 23 deadline to comply with his request.
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The terms and conditions of the deal were never disclosed, but it took the death penalty off the table, three relatives of 9/11 victims were told by the Office of Military Commissions (OMC), the New York Post reported.
Nearly 3,000 people were killed on Sept. 11, 2001 in the worst terror attack on U.S. soil in American history. Families of the victims, groups that represent them and lawmakers had expressed bewilderment and fury that those who planned the attack might not be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
However, that deal was rescinded after Austin relieved the official in charge of the military commission who had signed off on the agreement and assumed their authority for himself.
"Effective immediately, in the exercise of my authority, I hereby withdraw from the three pretrial agreements that you signed on July 31, 2024," the secretary wrote in a short memo Friday.
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The defense secretary did not explain why he had not intervened before the plea deals were signed and publicly released. The Department of Defense declined to comment on Austin's decision.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., announced a parallel investigation into the plea deal in a letter to President Biden on Friday. The committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Biden-Harris administration's sudden reversal.
Fox News Digital's Elizabeth Elkind and Stepheny Price contributed to this report.