On Tuesday, the embattled first son, via his lawyer, offered to testify in a public House Oversight Committee hearing—part of an aggressive new defense strategy that his legal team has decided to adopt. Comer, who chairs the committee, has spearheaded the probe into the Bidens’ supposed criminal wrongdoing and is one of their most vocal accusers. So far, his monthslong investigation has yet to turn up any proof of malfeasance.

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“Hunter Biden is trying to play by his own rules instead of following the rules required of everyone else. That won’t stand with House Republicans,” Comer said in a statement on X (formerly Twitter).

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Comer’s response is likely to get pushback from Biden’s legal team. Biden’s lawyer Abbe Lowell accused Comer in a letter on Tuesday of using “closed-door sessions to manipulate, even distort the facts and misinform the public.”

Notably, Comer had also said he would testify about his own business dealings with his brother—so long as Biden testified too. But now that Biden’s offer is on the table, Comer is backing away.

Let me get this straight. After wailing and moaning for 10 months about Hunter Biden and alluding to some vast unproven family conspiracy, after sending Hunter Biden a subpoena to appear and testify, Chairman Comer and the Oversight Republicans now reject his offer to appear before the full Committee and the eyes of the world and to answer any questions that they pose?

What an epic humiliation for our colleagues and what a frank confession that they are simply not interested in the facts and have no confidence in their own case or the ability of their own members to pursue it. What the Republicans fear most is sunlight and the truth.

As one of their first witnesses, Republicans called on Jonathan Turley, a conservative legal scholar who previously served as a Justice Department tax attorney. Turley was set to act as a content witness to help analyze the Biden family’s business dealings—but even he admitted there’s not enough evidence.

“In fact, I do not believe that the current evidence would support articles of an impeachment,” he told the hearing.

Turley had previously expressed this belief in written testimony submitted ahead of the hearing. “I do not believe that the evidence currently meets the standard of a high crime and misdemeanor needed for an article of impeachment,” he wrote.

Turley also said in his written statement that he did believe it was “warranted” for the House to investigate potential connections between Biden and his son Hunter’s business dealings.

Huckabee cautioned it would be a “huge mistake” to move forward without getting more information.

“To impeach Joe Biden in the House, knowing it’s not going to go to the Senate — there’s no point,” he said. “All it becomes is a political disaster.”

Huckabee said that until some Democrats agree with Republicans in that “Joe Biden is hopelessly corrupt,” the GOP members of the House should focus on other things, such as winning elections.