On Tuesday, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy opened a formal inquiry into impeaching President Joe Biden by directing GOP-controlled House committees to begin investigating him. All the evidence available now suggests that the case against Biden is exceptionally weak, and even House Republicans seem divided on whether it is worth pursuing. That is perhaps one reason McCarthy opted to begin an investigation without a vote of the full House of Representatives, reneging on a previous promise.

Most of the supposed case for impeachment rests on the idea that Joe Biden was improperly influenced by the business dealings his son, Hunter Biden, had with Ukrainian and Chinese companies. The president’s son also faces criminal charges that are both more substantial and unrelated to the grounds for impeaching Joe Biden. The charges don’t provide any strong evidence for impeachment claims, though they do understandably raise suspicions about the Biden family’s business and financial practices in general.

Hunter Biden certainly traded on his family name to land positions for which he had otherwise dubious qualifications, but that phenomenon is endemic to the entire ruling class, in politics and beyond. And the kind of influence-peddling the GOP is alluding to certainly happens among elite families with ties to overlapping and perhaps competing financial interests, but so far, Republicans have provided little hard evidence to suggest that the elder Biden was influenced by his son to a criminal or impeachable degree. Then there’s the fact that even with a rock-solid case, the Democrats’ thin majority in the Senate makes a conviction all but impossible.