GOP Rep. Devin Nunes was secretly recorded telling supporters that the Republicans have to keep control of the House to protect President Trump in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, according to a report.
“If [Attorney General Jeff] Sessions won’t unrecuse and Mueller won’t clear the president, we’re the only ones,” Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said at a private fundraiser July 30, NBC News reported Wednesday.
“Which is really the danger. … I mean we have to keep all these seats,” he continued. “We have to keep the majority. If we do not keep the majority, all of this goes away.”
Nunes was recorded while speaking at a closed-door event for Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Calif.) in Spokane, Wash.
It was released by the progressive group Fuse Washington and aired on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show.”
Nunes’ spokesman called the congressman’s comments “sensible ideas,” The Hill reported.
The California Republican, a Trump ally who worked on his transition team, has been highly critical of the FBI investigation into the president and claims it was launched by biased agents out to get Trump.
During the fundraiser, Nunes also said conservative Republicans decided to table the idea of impeaching Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who’s overseeing the Mueller probe, because it could endanger the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
Nunes said, “It’s a bit complicated” because “we only have so many months left, right?”
“So if we actually vote to impeach, okay, what that does is that triggers the Senate then has to take it up,” Nunes told the supporters. “Do you want them to drop everything and not confirm the Supreme Court justice, the new Supreme Court justice?”
He went on to say he supports Rosenstein’s impeachment, but “the question is the timing of it right before the election.”
Reps. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), members of the House Freedom Caucus, introduced a resolution last month to impeach Rosenstein.
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