With no effective check on its power, the Select Committee is trampling on fundamental Constitutional rights. It is investigating the political speech of private citizens and demanding access to their personal records and private communications. When disputes over the requests arise, the committee refuses to engage and seeks to punish. There is no presumption of innocence; instead Chairman Bennie Thompson declared citizens who invoke the Fifth Amendment are “part and parcel guilty to what occurred.”

Rather than operating openly, the Select Committee is working behind closed doors and selectively leaking cherry-picked information. When it has presented some evidence in public, the committee’s been caught deliberately altering documents—including a text message pertaining to one of us—to malign conservatives.

One would expect this sort of inquiry from a banana republic, not from the U.S. House of Representatives. By subpoenaing us and three other Republican members, the Select Committee is escalating its abusive tactics. This attempt to coerce information from members of Congress about their official duties is a dangerous abuse of power, serves no legitimate legislative purpose, and eviscerates constitutional norms. Just because members of Congress are responsible for writing the laws doesn’t give a select few license to subvert them.