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All right. So, with that, Mr. Greim, I understand you want to make a statement?
Mr. Greim. Yes. Thank you.
The witness preserves the objections that are set forth in the letter that we made responding the subpoena. Those objections were pertinence, legislative purpose, First Amendment privilege, and Fourth Amendment. We are standing by those. We're not waiving them here, other than to the extent we see that you have materials that had been covered that we didn't know you had. In some cases, others may have removed an element of one of the privileges, and we'll deal with that as it happens during the deposition.
We do object to the committee as not being properly composed. The resolution authorizing the select committee provides for the Speaker to appoint 13 members of the committee, but requires the Speaker to appoint five of those 13 members after consultation with the minority leader.
The Speaker failed to comply with this requirement in our view. None of the members of the committee were appointed in consultation with the minority leader. The Speaker rejected the minority leader's requested appointees and appointed all 13 members on her own. Our position is that the Speaker's failure to properly compose the committee invalidates all the committee's activities, including the issuance of this subpoena for deposition and for records.
We preserve that objection, but we are trying to work with you to avoid conflict in court proceedings that aren't necessary.
For similar reasons, we believe the subpoena was not properly issued. Under the committee's resolution, a deposition subpoena can only be issued after consultation with the ranking member. Here, there is no ranking member. This is denoted by Representative Cheney holding the title of vice chair rather than as ranking member. So
