Nunes secretly recorded at fundraiser: We have to protect Trump from Mueller

"That means it would derail or largely delay a big part of our agenda ... and it would clearly dramatically delay the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to go to the Supreme Court", he said.

Nunes' comments on the timing of an impeachment fight echo what House Speaker Paul Ryan, who does not support the impeachment push, has publicly said. "If we do not keep the majority, all of this goes away".

At least one lawmaker, Rep. Ted Lieu, D-El Segundo, took to Twitter to call on Nunes to resign.

The audio was recorded by a member of the progressive group Fuse Washington, which paid to attend the event and provided the audio to MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show.

Nunes also later talked about the upcoming November midterms and his concerns about keeping the Republican majority in the Senate and the House, all to keep Trump as president.

Later, he talks about the midterms and the honest need to keep a Republican majority in both the House and Senate, something Democrats are hoping to clinch.

"The corruption in Washington is rampant, and Nunes is at the heart of it".

Nunes announced previous year that he would step aside from his own committee's investigation into Russian interference after the House Ethics Committee said it was examining allegations that he "may have made unauthorized disclosures of classified information". Nunes appeared to say at the meeting that it was important the GOP maintain its control in Congress after the November elections so that they can continue to check that investigation.

REP. NUNES (R-CA): "The Senate would have to start, the Senate would have to drop everything they're doing and start to, and start with impeachment on Rosenstein. It's a matter of, it's a matter of timing".

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), no stranger to recent political gaffes, a has a secret master plan to save President Donald Trump from the nefarious forces lurking in the nether reaches of government.

"If Sessions won't unrecuse and Mueller won't clear the president, we're the only ones, which is really the danger", Nunes was recorded as saying.

"Sessions won't un-recuse, and Mueller won't clear the president, we're the only ones", Nunes said, according to the audio, which first aired publicly on MSNBC Wednesday night.

The remarks appear to be a blunt assessment from Nunes, a top Trump ally in Congress who Democrats accuse of trying to help the White House with the Russian Federation probe, that Republicans must keep their House majority in the midterm elections to shield Trump from the special counsel investigation.

The series of recordings made public by Maddow do not include every question to which Nunes was responding. "But if they tell a lie often enough and they put it out there and they say, 'Oh, we're looking at the tweets, ' cause you know you've got a mixed bag on the tweets, right?"