Lindsey Graham says Biden must be impeached if he cannot get Americans and Afghan allies out of Kabul

U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Friday that if President Joe Biden fails to evacuate every American citizen who wants to leave Afghanistan from the country, or if he leaves behind the thousands of Afghans who assisted U.S. forces for decades and are now being hunted down by the Taliban, he should be impeached by the United States Congress.

"The French and the British are willing to send their forces inside of Afghanistan to extract the people who helped them and their citizens. We're duty-bound to get every American citizen out. We're honor-bound to get those Afghans who fought along our side out," Graham said on "Fox & Friends" Friday morning.

"If we leave any Americans behind, if we leave thousands of those Afghans who fought along our side behind, bravely, Joe Biden deserves to be impeached for a high crime and misdemeanor of dereliction of duty," he continued.

"If we leave one American behind, if we don't get all those Afghans who stepped up to the plate and helped us out, then Joe Biden in my view has committed a high crime and misdemeanor under the Constitution and should be impeached," he emphasized.

Tens of thousands of U.S. citizens, residents, their families, and even more Afghans who helped the United States in the decades-long war against the Taliban were trapped in Afghanistan when the Islamist militants caught the Biden administration by surprise and seized the capital city Kabul on Sunday. U.S. forces had been in the middle of withdrawing from the country on Biden's orders, with full withdrawal expected to be completed by Aug. 31.

Desperate crowds of people rushed to the international airport in Kabul seeking to flee the country, causing chaos as the Biden administration was unprepared to evacuate everyone safely. Horrific videos emerged of Afghans clinging to departing U.S. evacuation flights and falling to their deaths after they could not secure passage on board.

The Biden administration is attempting to conduct evacuation flights out of Kabul, but was forced to pause flights Friday because a facility in Qatar where the U.S. is taking refugees to be processed had reached capacity. According to CBS News, the Biden administration is seeking to open a new flight option to a base in Bahrain where refugees can be taken to be processed.

Witnesses at the air base on Friday described the situation as a "full-blown humanitarian crisis."

U.S. forces have evacuated an estimated 12,700 people from Kabul's airport since Saturday, but President Biden said there were as many as 80,000 American citizens and Afghans still awaiting evacuation.

Complicating the matter is the fact that an unknown number of American citizens are stranded in Kabul without means to travel to the airport for evacuation. The Biden administration is claiming it does not have the capability to send U.S. troops into the city to extract Americans and their families and has advised would-be evacuees that the U.S. government cannot guarantee their safe passage to the airport.

The Taliban has established checkpoints throughout the city, and despite promises to guarantee safe passage for Americans to the airport, reports indicate that soldiers have used gunfire to disperse the crowds seeking entrance to the airport.