Updated on Friday at 12:24 p.m. to include comment from House Democratic Caucus and on Thursday at 6:12 p.m. with details throughout, at 12:25 p.m. with comment from GOP Reps. Briscoe Cain of Deer Park and Sarah Davis of West University Place and at 11:43 a.m. with comments from Rep. Michelle Beckley, D-Carrollton.

AUSTIN — The scandal over whether the speaker of the Texas House of Representatives asked a conservative political activist to target 10 fellow Republicans reached a boiling point Thursday, with a growing clamor for the activist to publicly release audio he says he secretly recorded of their meeting.

On Wednesday night, Michael Quinn Sullivan, the activist and frequent critic of Speaker Dennis Bonnen and other GOP leaders, began to allow some lawmakers to listen to the purported audio, fanning the flames of intraparty turmoil he set off last week when he first made his allegations. But he has declined to release the audio to the media, keeping the public in the dark and adding to the mystery of the now-weeklong drama.

The growing controversy threatens to throw House Republicans into a vicious and politically damaging civil war ahead of next year's crucial primary elections, in which Democrats are raring to flip the chamber for the first time since 2003. It's an abrupt twist of fate from a few weeks ago, when GOP leaders were touting a "kumbaya" legislative session in which they passed their priority school finance and property tax bills.

Pressure was mounting for Sullivan to produce evidence to back up his claims and for Bonnen and Republican Caucus Chairman Dustin Burrows, who was also present at the meeting, to offer lawmakers and the public a categorical explanation to a saga that has gripped Texas politics for the better part of a week.

‘Release your recording’

Rep. Travis Clardy of Nacogdoches, one of the 10 GOP incumbents on the alleged political hit list, told The Dallas Morning News he listened to the recordings Wednesday night and they confirm Sullivan's allegations.

He said Bonnen made "disparaging" comments about Republicans and Democrats in the Texas House and Burrows named GOP members who “should be targeted or could be targeted without repercussion.”

"They were made flippantly and they were disrespectful," said Clardy, who competed with Bonnen to become House speaker before the last legislative session. "It was repugnant. This is my fourth term and this is the most disappointing thing that I've ever seen."

At least two other Republican lawmakers also said they heard Sullivan’s recordings: Reps. Steve Toth of The Woodlands and Jonathan Stickland of Bedford. Both are politically aligned with Sullivan and have received donations from his group, Empower Texans, which targets GOP lawmakers it deems not conservative enough.

But despite threatening to release the audio Wednesday, Sullivan has refused to do so publicly, prompting Bonnen and other Republican lawmakers, pundits and even Democrats -- including Speaker Pro Tem Joe Moody of El Paso, one of Bonnen’s closest Democratic allies -- to call on Sullivan to prove his claims.

“Having all the evidence is always the best way to sort things out,” Moody wrote in a tweet. “I agree [with Bonnen] and colleagues on both sides of the aisle that the entire recording should be released.”

On Friday, the House Democratic Caucus echoed calls to release the audio in full.

"House Democrats agree with the Speaker and others that the recording should be released in in its entirety. Complete transparency is paramount; allowing select political insiders to hear it in private isn't going to cut it," said caucus chair Rep. Chris Turner, D-Grand Prairie.

"While Mr. Sullivan has unfortunately declined to release the recording thus far, the truth needs to come out quickly. If Mr. Sullivan's accusations are true, at least some of what he alleges must likely be investigated by appropriate authorities, to say nothing of the work the entire House will have to undertake to repair itself. Conversely, if the accusations are false, the House and all involved deserve to have this cloud lifted immediately.

The recording, which Sullivan is guarding closely and only allowing Republican lawmakers to listen to in his office in the presence of his lawyer, allegedly contains more than an hour of conversation between Sullivan, Bonnen and Burrows from a June 12 meeting. It is unclear how many lawmakers have listened to the recording.

Last Thursday, Sullivan accused Bonnen of offering to grant writers for his website media credentials if his affiliated political action committee spent money to target Republican incumbents in the primaries. Bonnen also asked that Empower Texans refrain from criticizing the legislative session and from spending money to unseat other incumbents, Sullivan wrote.

At one point in the meeting, according to Sullivan, Bonnen stepped out of the room and Burrows read him a list of 10 names to target.

The list reportedly included Clardy, Tan Parker of Flower Mound, Steve Allison of San Antonio, Trent Ashby of Lufkin, Ernest Bailes of Shepherd, Drew Darby of San Angelo, Kyle Kacal and John Raney of College Station, Stan Lambert of Abilene, and Phil Stephenson of Wharton.

Bonnen has denied providing a list.

On Wednesday morning, Stickland said on Lubbock radio host Chad Hasty’s show that Bonnen also offered to strip media credentials from Scott Braddock, editor of the insider political website and newsletter the Quorum Report, and give media access to Empower Texans' writers at its website, the Texas Scorecard.

Toth backed up Stickland’s account. He said Bonnen offered media credentials to Sullivan "in exchange for you popping these 10 guys."

"I've got something for you if you've got something for me," Toth said, describing what he said he heard on the audio. He alleged Bonnen offered to boot Braddock as more of an afterthought: "You come in. Scott goes out."

Braddock told The News he has requested to listen the audio and would not comment until he hears it for himself.

"If people are making accusations like this then they should be transparent, and they should let everyone hear it so that everyone can hear it for themselves," Braddock told Hasty. "On the journalist front, that's what actual journalists would do. Political operatives would handle it the way Empower Texans is doing it, which is to say only select people can hear this."

But Sullivan has declined requests from Democratic lawmakers to listen to the audio. Rep. Michelle Beckley of Carrollton, whom Sullivan says Bonnen disparaged, said he denied her request to listen to the recordings.

Beckley also said she has not been contacted by Bonnen since the allegations were made and called for the audio to be made public.

"I want it released," she said. "We should know what games are being played. I want transparency. Quite honestly, as a woman in politics, I want to know what he said."

Sullivan said in a blog post Wednesday that he has not released the audio because it “may damage innocent bystanders -- most notably the Republican Party of Texas and Republican politicians [including those with whom I disagree on matters of policy or philosophy].”

Stickland said Bonnen made politically damaging comments in the recording.

“As a Republican who wants to keep Texas red in 2020, I sure hope it doesn't come out because it's going to hurt us bad,” he said. “I think we need to cut out the cancer and move on immediately.”

But Burrows, who Sullivan said provided the target list, is also in hot water with some of his caucus. Some of the lawmakers reportedly on the list said Burrows has not reached out to them, and at least one -- Bailes of Shepherd -- called for answers from the chairman earlier this week. Burrows has not commented publicly since the scandal began. He did not return a request for comment.

"I think that both of them are dead politically. I think they will have to resign," Stickland told Hasty. "This shatters trust and relationships at the most basic level in the Texas House. I will be shocked if either of them survives this. I think this is going to upend Texas politics."

‘Forward as a body’

Clardy encouraged other House members to listen to the recording before making a "clear, responsible decision for how we're going to go forward as a body." He holds no malice for Bonnen and Burrows, he said, whom he welcomed to address the members in person to "try to set the record straight if there's something we have misunderstood or missed."

"If there's ever been a time that the Texas House of Representatives needs to function as a truly thoughtful body, it's right now," Clardy said. "I don't know how this happened. Good people make mistakes."

Removing a speaker would require a vote in the House, which does not return to the Capitol until the next legislative session in 2021.

If House Republicans wanted to press for answers from Burrows or call for a new leader, it would take a formal request from 10 of them to call for a caucus meeting. It’s unclear if they will ask for that, if Burrows will agree to answer questions or how soon a meeting could happen.

The House Republican Caucus has a retreat planned for Oct. 17 and 18, said Rep. Briscoe Cain, R-Deer Park.

"It seems like a caucus meeting would be in order, but I have not heard from anybody about a caucus meeting," said West University Place Rep. Sarah Davis, who does not plan on listening to Sullivan’s recording. "He's spent his career just attacking me and my Republican colleagues, so I don't have any interest meeting with him or anyone associated with him.”

It is also unclear whether enough House Republicans believe Sullivan’s account enough to base their call for a leadership change on his allegation.

But ahead of a crucial election year in 2020, Braddock said, Republican Party leaders may have to intervene to put an end to the scandal.

"For the good of the party, it may be that Gov. Abbott, Lt. Gov. Patrick may have to get involved," he said.

Neither Abbott not Patrick responded to The News' request for comment. Sam Pohl, a spokesman for the Republican Party of Texas, confirmed that Chairman James Dickey met with Sullivan before leaving on a political trip but declined to comment further.

CORRECTION, 4:26 p.m., Aug. 1, 2019: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said Patrick stripped Braddock's media credentials. Braddock was banned from the Senate floor but his credentials were not stripped.