Wednesday night, MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow aired audio leaked from a fundraiser hosted by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) for Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers’ (R-WA) reelection campaign. Per Maddow, the audio was obtained by a progressive group called “Fuse Washington” and comes from a closed-door, private event for donors in Spokane.
A spokesman from Nunes’ office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Here are the four biggest revelations from Nunes’ speech:
1) Nunes is worried that without the blind and unconditional protection of a Republican majority, the President will be in serious legal jeopardy from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe.
“This puts us in such a tough spot. If Sessions won’t unrecuse and Mueller won’t clear the President, we’re the only ones, which is really the danger…We have to keep all these seats, we have to keep the majority. We do not keep the majority, all of this goes away.”
2) Though their attempts seem to have petered out for now, there is still will from at least some faction of the Republican caucus to impeach Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
“The Senate would have to drop everything they’re doing and start with impeachment on Rosenstein, and then take the risk of not getting Kavanaugh confirmed. So it’s not a matter that any of us like Rosenstein, it’s a matter of timing.”
3) Nunes stated strongly that a politician disseminating stolen information given to him or her by a foreign entity is a crime (which sounds an awful lot like what the President, his family members and his associates may have done). In his hypothetical, Nunes is using Portugal as the foreign entity and Rodgers as the receiver.
“So Cathy was getting secret information from the Portuguese—that may or may not be unusual. But ultimately, let’s say that the Portuguese came and brought her some stolen e-mailed and she decided to release those. Okay now we have a problem, right? Because somebody stole the emails, gave them to Cathy, Cathy released them. Well if that’s the case, that’s criminal.”
4) On a less serious note: Even Nunes, one of Trump’s most stalwart defenders, sometimes cringes at the President’s tweets:
“…you know you have a mixed bag on the tweets right? Sometimes we love the President’s tweets and sometimes we cringe on the President’s tweets, but they’re trying to make a political—this is all political as to why that story ran the “New York Times” on the tweets.”
Watch the full segment of the Rachel Maddow Show here.
