WASHINGTON – A Republican aide on the House Foreign Affairs Committee announced Monday that he had “resigned in protest” after the panel “failed to seek answers” and hold the Biden administration “accountable” for the “disastrous” August 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal.

Committee senior investigator Jerry Dunleavy revealed in an X post that he had submitted his resignation letter on Friday, accusing Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) of having broken “promises” made to Gold Star families of the 13 US service members killed in Kabul by an ISIS-K suicide bomber during the botched pullout.

“While the Committee’s investigation has indeed unearthed further evidence detailing the Biden-Harris Admin’s responsibility for the horrific events of August 2021 & for the dangerous global fallout which followed, McCaul & his team have also been derelict in their duty to pursue answers for the Abbey Gate Gold Star families, to seek the proper documents, to bring in the proper witnesses, to ask the tough questions, to fully pursue the truth without fear or favor, & to do everything in the Committee’s power to ensure that a deadly humiliation like this never happens again,” said Dunleavy, a former journalist who authored the book “Kabul: The Untold Story of Biden’s Fiasco and the American Warriors Who Fought to the End.”

“McCaul & the Committee made promises to the Abbey Gate Gold Star families & to the American public at large — & those promises simply have not been kept,” he claimed.

“As I did as a reporter, an author, and a now-former senior investigator on Capitol Hill, I will continue my fight for the truth no matter what. The stakes are simply too high to do otherwise. More to come.”

Emily Cassil, a spokeswoman for the committee, responded in a statement: “Having worked for Chairman McCaul for two years, I can tell you he pours his heart and soul into getting answers for our Gold Star families and Afghanistan veterans.”

The House Foreign Affairs Committee has yet to release its final report on President Biden’s decision to withdraw all US forces from Afghanistan, leading to the fall of the nation’s government to the Taliban, hundreds of American citizens being left behind and the deaths of 13 US troops.

Cassil said the report was “the result of thousands of hours of work on both the staff and member level” and “will not be the end of our work, but a crucial next step toward ensuring the personal accountability that the Biden-Harris administration refused to provide.”

She acknowledged, however, that there had been limits to the committee’s investigative authority as well as obfuscations from the White House and National Security Council.

At least 20 senior administration officials were interviewed by the panel to compile the report, including former White House press secretary Jen Psaki, Under Secretary of Defense for Political Affairs John Bass and the chiefs of staff to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

The committee on Monday sent a formal request for Blinken to testify after the report is released.

Many of the top military leaders and administration officials who were responsible have since retired. None resigned after the last flight out of Kabul on Aug. 30, 2021.

Dunleavy in his resignation letter named several that had not even been called in for a transcribed interview, as well as others who had not received a public grilling by panel members — including USAID Administrator Samantha Power and Russ Travers, a former NSC adviser who was one of the 51 intelligence officials who discredited The Post’s scoop on Hunter Biden’s laptop as Russian disinformation.

He and co-author James Hasson reported in their book that the US intelligence community was aware of ISIS-K terrorists posted up at a hotel near the Kabul International Airport — and that military commanders had even asked for the Taliban to raid it.

More than two years passed before the Pentagon identified Abdul Rahman al-Logari as the suicide bomber who ended up killing the troops and 170 Afghan civilians, though Dunleavy had earlier identified the suspect as a freed prisoner form Bagram Air Base, which US forces abandoned to the Taliban.

He said the committee failed to “look into dozens of obvious & important leads” about the suicide blast.

Majority staff had also mishandled key hearings with former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, former head of US Central Command Gen. Kenneth McKenzie and former Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad, Dunleavy alleged.

In one of the earliest official testimonies about the Kabul disaster, McKenzie had acknowledged that the Taliban offered to let US forces maintain control of Kabul during the entirety of the bugout — but the US rejected it.

Biden, 81, overruled suggestions from both McKenzie and Milley to keep several hundreds of troops as a footprint in Afghanistan — and other top officials declined to resign after the botched withdrawal because the president reportedly didn’t view any part of it as a “mistake.”

Gold Star family members have repeatedly criticized Biden for his callous response to the deaths of their loved ones — and most recently for his false claim during his June 27 debate against former President Donald Trump that he was the “only president this century that doesn’t have any … troops dying anywhere in the world.”

McCaul at one point had threatened Secretary of State Antony Blinken with a subpoena to produce a dissent cable from Afghan diplomats before the withdrawal — but the State Department later relented and let panel members review the communications.

Many other officials — such as former Ambassador to Afghanistan John Bass and former NATO commander of US forces Retired Army Gen. Austin Scott Miller — in their own testimony had confirmed details about the chaotic withdrawal but often declined to place any blame.

Biden’s job approval went underwater during the withdrawal in mid-August 2021 and has never recovered, according to the RealClearPolitics polling aggregator.

“Washington has a widespread culture of unaccountability, & that has been especially true related to this war,” Dunleavy said. “I fear that this Committee’s investigation will embolden, rather than remedy, that perverse culture.”

“If those responsible aren’t held accountable, and if necessary lessons aren’t learned, I fear there will be even more Gold Star families in the future as a direct result,” warned Dunleavy, who served as an investigator on the panel from July 2023 to August 2024.