Republicans made grand accusations during an impeachment hearing Wednesday that President Joe Biden actively participated in his son’s and brother’s business dealings to enrich his family.

But Democrats repeatedly dismissed the claims as lies and denounced the hearing as a waste of time, underscoring the partisan divide over the inquiry, which has stretched more than six months but shown no signs of leading to an impeachment vote.

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) opened the hearing by highlighting what he described as a Biden family “scam.”

“Joe Biden shows up, shakes a few hands in front of his son, and says, ‘Take care of my boy,’ or something similar, and the money flows,” Comer said.

Republicans’ two witnesses at the hearing, Tony Bobulinski and Jason Galanis, repeatedly reinforced this claim, while a third witness, Lev Parnas, whom the Democrats invited, brushed it off as Russian disinformation.

Hunter Biden and his former associate Devon Archer both declined invitations from Comer to attend the hearing. Republicans left an empty seat at the witness table for Hunter Biden during the hearing to draw attention to his absence.

The hearing featured testy exchanges and soundbites at times.

Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) facetiously offered to Comer that he would make a motion to hold an impeachment vote to “show that this vote is never going to happen because [Republicans] have no evidence.” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), who has been leading the impeachment inquiry alongside Comer, shot back, “We don’t do snap impeachments like you guys.”

Bobulinski, who became involved in a venture with Hunter Biden and a Chinese energy conglomerate in 2017, accused two House Democrats, Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and Dan Goldman (D-NY), of being “liars,” prompting objections from Raskin about allowing the remark to appear in the congressional record.

Goldman later berated Bobulinski, accusing him of calling “a number of people liars” and to “be quiet” as he confronted the witness over a photo that apparently featured Bobulinski with Mark Meadows at a Trump rally. Democrats made an effort throughout the hearing to cast Bobulinski as politically motivated to help former President Donald Trump.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) at one point demanded Bobulinski detail what crimes he believed Joe Biden had committed.

“How much time do I have to go through it?” Bobulinski asked. “Corruption statutes, RICO and conspiracy, FARA,” Bobulinski said in reference to racketeering and the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

“Excuse me, sir. Excuse me, sir. Excuse me, sir. RICO is not a crime. It is a category,” Ocasio-Cortez said before continuing to demand details of the president’s alleged crimes.

Bobulinski first came forward in 2020, ahead of the presidential election, with claims that he had witnessed Joe, Hunter, and James Biden, the president’s brother, working in concert to garner investments from foreign executives by wielding Joe Biden’s political influence.

Bobulinski reiterated on Wednesday how he personally met with Joe Biden in May 2017 at a Beverly Hilton hotel in California at the behest of Hunter and James Biden strictly because Bobulinski planned to go into business with them.

Hunter Biden committed “egregious perjury” during his own closed-door deposition with the committee last month because, Bobulinski said, the first son had denied that his father ever met with his business associates.

Several Republicans also turned toward Galanis, who was appearing virtually at the hearing from prison. Galanis is serving out a 14-year sentence after he was convicted of participating in multimillion-dollar fraud schemes for 10 years beginning in 2007.

The Republicans asked him about a phone call Hunter Biden made to his father in 2014 that Galanis participated in. Galanis reiterated testimony he gave in a closed-door interview with the committee last month, during which he said a Russian billionaire Hunter Biden was working with also got on the phone.

“I’m here with our friends, I told you we were coming to town, and we wanted to say hello,” Hunter Biden said to Joe Biden on the call, according to Galanis.

Bank records show that the billionaire, just a few months before that phone call, had wired a company co-founded by Hunter Biden and Archer $3.5 million. But there is no evidence Hunter Biden personally ever received that money, and both the first son and Archer testified to Congress that the money had been for Archer to use for his real estate business. Furthermore, Hunter Biden claimed he barely knew Galanis and only met him once “10 years ago for 30 minutes.”

Democrats repeatedly dismissed Galanis as a witness who lacked credibility because, they argued, he was a convicted felon testifying from prison. Meanwhile, they themselves brought in Parnas, who is also a convicted felon who went to prison for fraud.

The hearing was the second public event Republicans have held to showcase their findings after having spent six months interviewing several witnesses behind closed doors and pouring over tens of thousands of financial records. The records confirm Hunter and James Biden and their personal companies received several million dollars from foreign investors during the last decade. However, the GOP conference, on the whole, has shown little appetite to resort to impeaching Joe Biden over the matter based on a lack of conclusive findings of impeachable offenses.

Comer has in recent weeks more openly signaled that he could merely introduce legislative reforms or make criminal referrals as a result of his findings rather than hold an impeachment vote.

The chairman also announced that he would in the coming days invite Joe Biden “to provide his testimony [to the committee] and explain why his family received tens of millions of dollars from foreign companies with his assistance.”

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White House spokesman Ian Sams responded by criticizing Comer’s invitation as a “sad stunt.”

“Comer knows 20+ witnesses have testified that POTUS did nothing wrong,” Sams said in a statement. “He knows that the hundreds of thousands of pages of records he’s received have refuted his false allegations. This is a sad stunt at the end of a dead impeachment. Call it a day, pal.”