Let’s talk about the elephants in the room. Or, more accurately, the Republicans in the House of Representatives. Since the start of the impeachment inquiry into President Trump, GOP leadership has run an astounding disinformation campaign. Their attacks are not only misguided, but they endanger the institution of impeachment itself.

Since the start of the inquiry, Republican lawmakers have insisted that the inquiry has been a biased, unfair process. Every day, Republican politicians appear on cable news to try to convince Americans that the process is tainted. President Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., declared on Tuesday that the Democrats are using “Gestapo tactics,” and that they only want “to try and overturn an election because they don’t like the results.”

Countless GOP House members have claimed that the lack of a vote in the initial phase of the impeachment inquiry is unconstitutional. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) called the Oct. 31 inquiry vote a “sham.” House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) stood on the House Floor on the day of the vote and said, “This is Soviet-style rules.” In a press conference following the vote, Liz Cheney (R-WY) attempted to discredit the accumulated testimony built up since the impeachment inquiry began. Her logic was that “the Democrats cannot fix this process [because] they’ve now created a record over the course of the last several weeks with witnesses they selected.” She went on to claim that Republican members were unable to question witnesses or view transcripts from the secret depositions.

These mischaracterizations of the impeachment inquiry threaten the very procedure of impeachment itself. They discredit the constitutional process by which evidence of Donald Trump’s alleged abuses of power have been brought to light. As American constitutional scholar and Harvard Professor Laurence Tribe said last week, “We’re now dealing with something that so dramatically and obviously exemplifies the very heart of what a high crime and misdemeanor is that the lesson that will be taught if this president is not removed by the Senate after being impeached by the House is that nothing counts as a high crime and misdemeanor.”

For anyone with little understanding of the trappings of the U.S. House, the Democrat-led investigation might seem like foul play. But what Republicans are banking on Americans not understanding is that Congressional committees constantly take up investigations and hearings independent of votes of the whole House.

Most of the House of Representatives’ operations run through its 20 permanent committees, which perform most of Congress’s legislative, oversight, and administrative tasks. When it comes to oversight, Committee Chairs exercise the discretion of investigating allegations, issuing subpoenas to witnesses, and preparing reports of their findings. Importantly, committee chairs have the right to exercise these powers in advance of any formal resolution by the full House authorizing proceedings.

But Republican deceit belies the House rules themselves. In contrast to GOP claims about the proper path for impeachment, Jefferson’s Manual, the first American book of Congressional parliamentary procedures, provides several routes for impeachment to be set in motion. An impeachment inquiry may be initiated through charges brought forward on the floor, a resolution referred to a committee, or a message from the president himself regarding any civil officers of the United States. Another way — the route that Democrats’ chose for their impeachment inquiry into President Trump — is to develop facts through House Committees’ investigations.

Instead of calling this process “unfair” when, in fact, it is being performed within the scope of the House Rules, critics of the inquiry should note the actual differences between this impeachment inquiry and past presidential inquiries.

Democrats’ route to the impeachment inquiry this year differs from the methods the House used to investigate President Clinton in 1998 and President Nixon in 1974. Both of those investigations were initiated by an Attorney General’s appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate allegations, and then House votes were taken to begin a formal impeachment process.

Instead of an initial investigation led by a special prosecutor, in today’s inquiry, three House panels are investigating allegations of abuses of power by President Trump.

Contrary to Republican rhetoric, the House Rules permit this type of investigation. An investigative inquiry by committees does not require a vote of the whole House. It’s the Committees’ Democratic Chairs’ prerogative to hold these investigations. A committee’s majority may call witnesses for depositions and control the scope and direction of an investigation.

Despite what we’ve heard from the GOP, Republican representatives on these committees have been allowed their fair share of time to question witnesses. And what the GOP won’t say in their deception campaign: the Clinton and Nixon investigations also had closed and open testimony.

Republicans weren’t complaining about the majority’s control over committee investigations from 2014 to 2016, when Rep. Trey Gowdy led the Select Committee on Benghazi in an investigation of the 2012 Benghazi attack. Back then, Democrats clamored for the release of a private deposition transcript, while even some Republicans accused that committee of partisanship.

Then-Representative and now Secretary of State Mike Pompeo talked about the necessity of holding the private deposition of Hillary Clinton advisor Sidney Blumenthal in order to learn about his role in U.S. foreign policy and “how it impacted decisions related to security.”

Now Secretary Pompeo finds himself embroiled in the middle of a Congressional investigation. He’s been lambasted for his failure to defend his own State Department appointees as they’ve been attacked by President Trump over their testimony regarding the president’s quid pro quo demands to President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine.

So the tides have turned, and just as in the past, the majority charges forward while the minority mourns its lacking powers.

But one look through the House rules disproves frequent Republican claims that the impeachment inquiry wasn’t legitimate until the whole House voted on it. Though the impeachment inquiry might break from precedent, it does not break the rules.