Leaked audio of Devin Nunes at a fundraiser for Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the fourth-most senior Republican in the House, catches him telling a room full of donors the crass political truth behind his role in the Russia investigation.  He admits that he knows collusion is illegal and declares that a Republican majority in the House is necessary to protect the historically corrupt Trump administration from real oversight.

Nunes’ candor confirms what we’ve been saying all along: that this Trump accomplice considers it his job to insulate the president from any consequences in the Russia investigation.

We’ve updated the Nunes File on the Moscow Project website with the latest information on his long history of misdeeds and detailed timeline entries. Some highlights:

• The faux scandals he started, such as “unmasking,” Uranium One, and the “Nunes Memo,” all of which imploded spectacularly and one that forced Nunes to briefly recuse himself amid an investigation into whether he improperly handled classified information
• The House Intelligence Committee’s bogus investigation, which amounted to little more than a cover-up that claimed Russia never supported Trump in the first place  (later debunked when Vladimir Putin himself said he wanted Trump to win)
• Nunes’ problematic role as a member of Trump’s transition team in constant contact with Trump’s first National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, right around the time Flynn was conspiring with the Russian ambassador to undermine the Obama administration

But it’s not just Nunes. After all, his remarks were right at home at a fundraiser for a top member of GOP leadership, and he wouldn’t be able to keep wreaking havoc without his chief enabler, Paul Ryan.

• Rather than do the right thing and remove Nunes from his post, Ryan has abdicated his responsibility to the American people by co-signing Nunes’s increasingly absurd attempts to derail the investigation, often against the express wishes of the U.S. intelligence community and even Republican counterparts in the Senate.

As Nunes himself makes clear, the whole House Republican caucus is complicit in blocking oversight of the Trump administration.

• According to Democrats on the Intel Committee, their Republican counterparts repeatedly stymied efforts to pursue important leads in the Russia investigation, such as interviewing the alleged Russian spy Maria Butina.
• Intel Republicans have also refused to pursue allegations that key witnesses, such as Erik Prince, have lied to them, preferring to continue their wild goose chase in desperate search of new ways to discredit Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his investigation.
• While House Republicans dropped their recent effort to impeach Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversees Mueller, Nunes says that was just a logistical decision: If the Senate confirms Brett Kavanaugh, he promised, blocking the Russia investigation will go back to the top of the docket.

Nunes has the power of subpoena and, as a member of the Gang of Eight, access to the highest levels of intelligence, which he’s used to run interference for Trump on every possible occasion. What he says behind closed doors just confirms the bad faith he’s been operating in – and if Paul Ryan were anything but a Trump accomplice too, he’d do something about it.

Read the updated Nunes File HERE.