It was already starting to look dire for House Republicans. “The math keeps getting worse,” House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer said of his impeachment probe last week, after Democrats flipped George Santos’ vacated seat and further narrowed the GOP’s majority. But to say Republicans have a math problem may be understating it: Alexander Smirnov, the “trusted FBI informant” whose claims about President Joe Biden were central to their impeachment push, was indicted this month for lying to the FBI, and prosecutors said this week that he told investigators the “lies” he put forth about the president came from Russian intelligence.

Republicans had constructed their Biden impeachment inquiry on the flimsiest of supports. Now, those supports are officially buckling. “I don’t think we are going to get to a point, quite honestly, where we are going to be able to impeach him, especially with the thin margin that we have,” Republican Representative Scott Perry said at the Conservative Political Action Conference Thursday.

That doesn’t mean they aren’t pressing on with their stunt, of course. But with nothing but smoke and mirrors, the whole exercise has never seemed more brazenly political—or politically risky for swing-district members. “I’ve not seen any evidence,” Ohio Republican David Joyce told Politico. “I’ve heard a lot of accusations.”

Jim Jordan, one of the most prolific peddlers of those accusations, has unsurprisingly promised to forge ahead, insisting that Smirnov’s indictment “doesn’t change the fundamental facts” of the case against Biden. But Smirnov’s alleged fictions, and the apparent source of them, absolutely do change the facts of the case, and the inquiry—which the right had long been clamoring for, in a transparent effort to avenge twice-impeached Donald Trump—seems to be imploding.

Don Bacon, a purple district Republican from Nebraska, told Politico he knows of “like 20 Republicans” opposed to the effort. Patrick McHenry, who briefly led the conference as temporary speaker following the ouster of Kevin McCarthy, told CBS News’ Major Garrett that the odds of articles even making it to the floor for a vote are now “less than 50 percent.”

“It was that foundation that the whole house of cards has been built on,” Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the Oversight Committee, told ABC News this week of Smirnov’s account. “And the entire thing has collapsed.”

Don’t expect that to stop House Republicans, though. Bacon and other vulnerable members expressed similar reservations about the absurd impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, only to ultimately line up behind the effort. A Biden impeachment would be a far bigger step, one they may be even more reluctant to take after the humiliating Mayorkas debacle. But if Republicans learned anything from their Benghazi posturing, it’s that they don’t necessarily need their insinuations to lead anywhere to be effective. For their purposes, the continued suggestion of wrongdoing can be enough. “We’re going to continue right up until the end of the term to bring this information out,” Perry told CPAC. “If Joe Biden wants to run for office again, have him explain this to the people that he wants to vote for him.”