Lacking support and evidence, the GOP-led impeachment inquiry against President Biden continued to sputter out, even as House Republicans on Wednesday held a hearing that featured witnesses who reiterated thin allegations that members of the Biden family capitalized financially on their father’s name.

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) commenced the investigation into Biden last year with allegations of high crimes and misdemeanors that Republicans have since struggled to support. Fifteen months later, no evidence or testimony obtained by congressional Republicans has showed that Joe Biden was a direct participant in or beneficiary of his son Hunter Biden’s business dealings. And while some of Hunter Biden’s close associates have placed his father in proximity to those involved with some of the deals — undermining the president’s claims he was unaware of Hunter’s activities — none of the allegations have met Republican claims that Hunter Biden’s business activities fueled an influence-peddling operation that enriched Joe Biden and his family.

With a threadbare majority, House Republicans need near unanimity to approve articles of impeachment against the president, which they do not have. Instead, skepticism among rank-and-file Republicans has only grown since an FBI informant was charged with lying about the Bidens, an implosion of what had been presented as a major piece of evidence.

In the absence of those votes, Comer and other members of the investigating committees have pivoted to the possibility of criminal referrals. Comer has threatened to make “multiple” criminal referrals, but it remains unclear whether lawmakers will formally accuse President Biden of a crime and what crimes they allege may have been committed.

“I’m not sure how we would have a criminal referral of the president yet not move forward with impeachment,” Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.) said. “I mean the [Justice Department] is never going to take that up anyway.”

Armstrong, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, added that the committee could pursue criminal referrals around violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act for several witnesses who have testified before the committee. Hunter Biden, who declined to appear Wednesday, is facing nine criminal charges in a long-running federal tax case and felony gun charges.

“My views on impeachment in general? It’s a very high bar that they need to meet, and they needed to convince their colleagues that it was the right thing to do,” Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) said. “If they are declining to bring articles of impeachment, I think that is the right decision.”

The apparent collapse of one of the House GOP’s marquee investigations was preceded by a string of incidents where Comer, who has been criticized by even some Republican colleagues for his Fox News-centric approach to the investigation, elevated allegations against Biden and his son before they publicly fizzled. Rep. Jamie Raskin (Md.), the ranking Democrat on the Oversight Committee, in his opening statement Wednesday called the hearing “the end of perhaps the most spectacular failure in the history of congressional investigations.”

“Our colleagues now are apparently preparing to save face by ending the impeachment farce with criminal referrals,” Raskin said. “But criminal referrals require evidence of crimes. And the only crimes we have seen are those of the GOP’s own star witnesses.”

Any criminal referral issued by Congress to the Justice Department would be a symbolic move that carries no legal weight on its own, leaving prosecutors with the decision about whether to pursue criminal charges. But a criminal referral could spell out the Oversight Committee’s findings in the clearest terms possible, serving as a messaging vehicle for Republicans who have sought to legitimize unsubstantiated claims and theories about Biden and his family.

Some members indicated that they were open to weighing any new evidence House investigators may unearth in the meantime, but Rep. Mike Garcia (R-Calif.) noted that Republicans were running out of time before the rematch between Biden and former president Donald Trump — and that Biden faces bigger electoral challenges than a potential impeachment that is destined to fail in a Democratic-controlled Senate.

“Ultimately the American people will be voting in October or November to decide whether or not this president is suitable for office,” Garcia said. “I think he’s got enough other challenges and failures under his belt that the impeachment probably wouldn’t even affect the outcome of the election.”

Tony Bobulinski, a onetime business associate of Hunter Biden’s, and Jason Galanis, who is serving a nearly 16-year federal prison sentence in Montgomery, Ala., for multiple fraud schemes, both testified at the hearing Wednesday at the behest of House Republicans. They both made claims that Joe Biden was involved in his family members’ business activities before offering details of limited interactions with Joe Biden to flesh out the allegations. Bobulinski has pointed to a meeting he had with Joe Biden in May 2017, arranged by Hunter Biden and the president’s brother James, as proof Joe Biden was aware of his son’s business dealings with foreign entities. But when Bobulinski was asked about the meeting Wednesday, he made no specific mention of their pursuit of a deal with CEFC, a Chinese energy conglomerate, as he described the 45-minute meeting in Los Angeles.

“We talked about my background, my family’s military background, the different business ventures I had done around the world, the family I worked with — Joe spent time talking about his family, some of the tragedies that they had lived through,” Bobulinski said, describing the discussion with Joe Biden, who was not in office at the time.

Galanis, who testified via Zoom from prison, also described a “relatively short discussion” with then-Vice President Biden in May 2014 after Hunter Biden, at a party, pulled aside Galanis and a small group of people — including Russian billionaire Yelena Baturina and her husband, Yury Luzkhkov, and Hunter Biden’s ex-business associate Devon Archer — and called Joe Biden on speakerphone. Galanis claimed that the discussion was about Baturina and Luzkhkov’s upcoming visit to Washington and “they talked about being good to his boy.” Pressed on whether this call was about Hunter Biden displaying “access to the Biden brand” to prospective investors, Galanis stated it was.

Rep. Gary Palmer (R-Ala.) called out inconsistencies during the hearing between testimony provided by members of the Biden family and testimony from Bobulinski and Galanis as a potential basis for another criminal referral: lying to Congress. After the hearing, Palmer defended the Oversight Committee’s process and cautioned that there was still time for members to consider articles of impeachment.

“I think we need to be very deliberate, very painstaking — because there’s a lot of people’s lives involved. … My objective is not to get somebody, my objective is to get to the truth,” Palmer said.

The hearing grew contentious at times. As Rep. Lisa C. McClain (R-Mich.) sought to diminish Hunter Biden’s reputation, derisively referring to him as the “golden child,” Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) laughed and muttered under her breath that McClain’s commentary was “rich.”

“Look at your party,” Pressley added. “Give me a break.”

At one point, Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) challenged Comer to make a motion to impeach Biden. “When can we tell the American people, you’re going to stop wasting your money and just call for the vote on impeachment?” Moskowitz said.

“We don’t do snap impeachments like you guys,” Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) retorted.

Several Democrats needled Republicans for choosing to hold a hearing for an impeachment inquiry that was in part opened on the basis of a claim that authorities now say was untrue. Special counsel David Weiss, who previously filed criminal charges against Hunter Biden, last month announced charges against an FBI informant, whose claims Comer had touted as a foundational piece of evidence in the impeachment inquiry, for allegedly lying to the FBI.

Comer and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) last spring surfaced unsubstantiated allegations made in 2020 by Alexander Smirnov — a former confidential human source for the FBI — that Joe Biden had engaged in a bribery scheme, and subpoenaed the FBI for the document containing Smirnov’s claims. The allegations made by Smirnov were previously reviewed by the FBI under then-Attorney General William P. Barr and found not to be supported by facts, and subsequently dropped.

But Comer and other congressional Republicans spent months arguing that Smirnov’s claims were evidence that the Bidens had engaged in corrupt business deals, and that the FBI did not pursue those claims. The saga garnered significant media coverage; Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News aired at least 85 segments about the unsubstantiated claim that Joe Biden had accepted a bribe, according to a tally by Media Matters for America.

“This entire inquiry is based on a blockbuster piece of information that was in a classified SCIF room and inside that room was a document alleging President Biden directly of a $10 million bribery scheme,” said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). “What happened a month ago? The FBI arrested the person who offered those allegations for falsifying his testimony to the FBI. This entire impeachment inquiry is based on an actual provable individual who has lied.”

“Responsible leadership would withdraw an inquiry based on that,” Ocasio-Cortez added.

Democrats also questioned Lev Parnas, a former associate of Rudy Giuliani’s who was convicted in a campaign finance fraud case and appeared Wednesday, about his time working with Giuliani in 2018 and 2019 to track down damaging information about Joe Biden. The Ukrainian American businessman called out the cohort of pro-Trump lawmakers who have disseminated misinformation about the Bidens and their work in Ukraine.

“The only information ever pushed on the Bidens and Ukraine has come from one source and one source only: Russia and Russian agents,” Parnas testified.

At the end of the hearing, Comer said he was inviting the president to testify to Congress, an invitation a White House spokesperson laughed off on social media.