Republican lawmakers made a few interesting points while defending President Donald Trump during the House’s first day of public impeachment hearings. They noted that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has publicly asserted that he didn’t feel pressured by Trump to deliver on his end of a quid pro quo during the infamous July 25 call or any time afterwards, despite the available evidence. It’s hard to blame Zelenskiy for this strategy: Ukraine depends on bipartisan U.S. support in the ongoing conflict with Russia, and his reluctance to upset those ties is understandable.

Another complaint by Republicans was that the alleged scheme wasn’t actually carried out. It’s true that Trump released the aid on September 11 even though Zelenskiy hadn’t announced an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter. But that decision came two days after the intelligence community’s inspector general notified the House Intelligence Committee about the whistleblower complaint, and one day after the committee requested a copy of it. In other words, the scheme only fell apart when the House closed in on it. After the aid was released, Zelenskiy canceled his scheduled September 13 CNN appearance where he was allegedly going to announce the Biden investigation. No quid, no quo.

But perhaps the most consistent critique from GOP lawmakers during Wednesday’s impeachment hearings was that the two men under oath didn’t have any first-hand knowledge of the scheme. Bill Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine at the moment, and George Kent, a top State Department official for Eurasian matters, told lawmakers how they slowly pieced together a shadow foreign policy led by Rudy Giuliani and his allies. They described how others told them that Trump wanted a quid pro quo exchange from Zelenskiy: Ukraine would get the military aid when he publicly announced an investigation into Biden, smearing the then-frontrunner in the race for the 2020 Democratic nomination.

That wasn’t good enough for some GOP lawmakers. “Bill Taylor testifies about information that he heard from others,” Arizona Representative Andy Biggs wrote on Twitter. “That is hearsay. That type of testimony is excluded in a law court because it is considered inherently unreliable.” Others painted the testimony more artfully. “Ambassador Taylor is telling Congress that Tim Morrison told him that Ambassador Sondland told Morrison that the President told Sondland…,” quipped New York Representative Lee Zeldin, one of the president’s most aggressive defenders in the House.

This line of criticism—that testimony from Taylor and Kent can be ignored because it’s hearsay—is flawed for three reasons. First, there will actually be witnesses testifying next week who will be able to give first-hand accounts of what happened. White House aide Tim Morrison is scheduled to appear before the committee on Tuesday. Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union and a key player in the Ukraine saga, is also scheduled to appear on Wednesday. Sondland already revised his closed-door testimony once before to describe what amounts to a quid pro quo scheme. Republican lawmakers are essentially gambling that what he says in public next week won’t be even worse.