Biden and Harris ‘Never Once Reached Out’ to Relatives of Soldiers Killed in Bungled Afghanistan Withdrawal, Families Say

They just want to pretend it didn’t happen,’ says Gold Star aunt Cheryl Juels

The families of U.S. service members killed at Abbey Gate in Afghanistan said they have never been contacted by President Joe Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris, three years after the administration’s rushed withdrawal left 13 Americans dead and hundreds stranded.

“There’s never even been condolences [from Biden or Harris]. They just want to pretend it didn’t happen,” said Cheryl Juels, the aunt of fallen 23-year-old Marine Sergeant Nicole M. Gee. “They want to take credit for ending the war, but they don’t want to take any responsibility for the way it all went down.”

Juels said Biden has “never once reached out to any of our family. Kamala Harris has never reached out.”

Alicia Lopez, the Gold Star mother of Marine Corporal Hunter Lopez, 22, criticized what she saw as a “lack of responsibility taken by the administration of both Harris and Biden,” and a failure to investigate the mistakes behind the withdrawal.

“For them to think that it’s okay, and to treat it as another page in the book that they’re just flipping over for the next chapter, it saddens me and frightens me, all at the same time,” she said.

The families were speaking at a press phone conference organized by the Trump campaign to mark the third anniversary of the terrorist bombing at Abbey Gate outside the Kabul airport. The attack, which took place while the United States was rushing to evacuate the city to meet Biden’s withdrawal deadline, killed 13 U.S. service members and injured 18. Over 100 Afghan civilians were also killed in the bombing.

On Monday, former president Donald Trump visited the Arlington National Cemetery to help place wreaths on the graves of the soldiers killed in the attack.

Harris, who did not have any memorial-related events on the schedule, released a statement honoring the fallen soldiers who “made the ultimate sacrifice three years ago.” She also defended her administration’s Afghanistan withdrawal as the “courageous and right decision.”

Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance, a Marine veteran, slammed Harris as “incompetent” during the call with the Gold Star families.

“It is incompetent not to get to the bottom of why this disaster happened in the first place, and what breakdown in authority led to this disaster,” said Vance.

The Gold Star families on the call also criticized Biden and Harris for not attending memorial ceremonies for the soldiers on Monday. Biden is reportedly vacationing at his family’s beach house in Delaware.

Mark Schmitz, the Gold Star father of Marine Lance Corporal Jared Schmitz, said Biden and Harris have “treated the withdrawal from Afghanistan like the plague.”

“They have stayed as far away from us as they possibly can,” he said. “Seeing that today was the wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington, I’m not surprised in the least that neither one of them would show up.”

While Harris hasn’t highlighted the Afghanistan withdrawal on the campaign trail, she told CNN’s Dana Bash three years ago that she was the “last person in the room” when Biden made the decision to pull out.

House Republicans have been investigating the Biden administration’s mistakes during the operation. The Pentagon recently confirmed that the Abbey Gate suicide bomber was an ISIS-K terrorist who had been freed from a prison discarded by the U.S. military during the withdrawal.