Bereft of legislative victories and propped up by his party’s hard-liners, Mike Johnson, the newly named Republican Speaker of the House, has opted to martial his powers against Joe Biden. On Wednesday evening, the House voted 221-212 along party lines to authorize a formal impeachment inquiry into the president, despite a nearly yearlong probe of Biden that has produced zero damning evidence of wrongdoing.

House Democrats have said that Republicans are pursuing impeachment to hurt Biden’s reelection odds and boost those of Donald Trump. “No one even knows what criminal or constitutional offense Biden is supposed to have committed,” wrote Jamie Raskin, the Oversight Committee ranking member, in a post on X. “The purpose of the inquiry is to give Trump, the one-man crime wave, something to talk about.” Another indicator that the push for impeachment is entirely political: Some of the Republicans pursuing the inquiry had also voted against certifying Biden’s Electoral College vote, including Johnson and House Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan. Moreover, Troy Nehls, a Texas Republican, was asked Wednesday what he hopes to achieve through the impeachment inquiry. “All I can say is, Donald J. Trump 2024, baby,” he replied.

The White House has denied all accusations of wrongdoing on behalf of the president. “The American people need their leaders in Congress to take action on important priorities for the nation and world,” Biden wrote in a statement Wednesday. “On Tuesday, I met with the president of Ukraine, who is leading his people in a battle for freedom against Russian aggression. He came to America to ask us for help. Yet Republicans in Congress won’t act to help.” He went on to claim that Republican stubbornness is to blame for Washington’s inability to muster funding for Israel and border security, and said the House majority is driving the US toward a government shutdown. “Instead of doing anything to help make Americans’ lives better, they are focused on attacking me with lies,” Biden continued. “Instead of doing their job on the urgent work that needs to be done, they are choosing to waste time on this baseless political stunt that even Republicans in Congress admit is not supported by facts.”

The vote comes three months after former Speaker Kevin McCarthy unilaterally directed three House committees—Oversight, Judiciary, and Ways and Means—to open an impeachment inquiry. But McCarthy, a California Republican who plans to resign from Congress by the end of the year, had avoided taking the inquiry to a floor vote after it became clear that it would not receive sufficient support. The allegations Republicans have pinned on Biden primarily originate from his time as vice president and the business dealings of his son Hunter Biden and his brother James Biden. Republicans claim Biden used the vice presidency to run an influence-peddling scheme to enrich himself and members of his family. And yet, despite attempting to impeach Biden on “bribery” charges since his second day in office, Republicans have failed to support that claim.

Even Fox News hosts have raised doubts regarding the substance of the Republican investigation. Earlier this week, Fox & Friends co-anchor Steve Doocy told viewers, “The Republicans, at this point…have not connected the dots” between Hunter’s alleged criminality and his father. “They’ve connected the dots—the Department of Justice did, on Hunter—but they have not shown where Joe Biden did anything illegally.”

Nonetheless, Johnson has pressed forward after reasoning that enough members of his party had become receptive to a formal impeachment inquiry, particularly after Hunter, who was subpoenaed by the House Oversight Committee last month, refused to appear for a closed-door deposition, demanding instead that his appearance be public. The deposition was due to take place on Wednesday. But Hunter, already under federal indictment for tax- and firearm-related charges, skipped it in favor of a press conference in front of the Capitol building. “I am here to testify at a public hearing today, to answer any of the committee’s legitimate questions,” he said. “What are they afraid of?”

Later on Wednesday, Jordan and House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer accused Hunter of defying lawful subpoenas, saying in a joint statement they “will now initiate contempt of Congress proceedings.” Speaking to reporters, Jordan claimed that a public hearing would only be derailed by “filibusters” and “speeches.” On the other side of the aisle, Raskin argued that Republicans want a private deposition “so the public couldn’t see it and so they could continue to cherry-pick little pieces of evidence.”

As for the impeachment inquiry, some previously skeptical Republicans are now attempting to downplay the probe as nothing more than an investigative tool rather than an important step toward what would be the fifth presidential impeachment in US history. “The president is saying he isn’t going to provide information until we get an inquiry, so I went from a no to a yes,” Don Bacon, a moderate Republican from Nebraska, told Politico earlier this week. “My view of it is, let’s just get the information so the voters have it.” One motivation for formalizing the inquiry was the White House’s position that subpoenas from Republican House committees were illegitimate without a floor vote. That was House majority whip Tom Emmer’s message Tuesday. “Voting in favor of an impeachment inquiry does not equal impeachment,” he said. Emmer then all but admitted that Republicans are on a desperate fishing expedition: “We will continue to follow the facts wherever they lead, and if they uncover evidence of treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors, then and only then will the next steps towards impeachment proceedings be considered.”