John Dowd’s resignation as Donald Trump’s personal attorney is another marker that the President is moving toward a war footing against Robert Mueller, the special counsel. Mueller’s mandate encompasses possible Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election, and also certain other crimes he comes across in the course of that inquiry. It can be hard to know which part of this angers Trump the most. But Dowd’s departure substantially increases the chances that the President will move to fire Mueller—perhaps very soon.

Dowd himself was no dove. In an interview with the Daily Beast last week, he appeared to channel his client and called for an end to the Mueller investigation when speaking about the firing of Andrew McCabe, the former deputy head of the F.B.I., who was set to retire. Dowd called the McCabe move “brilliant and courageous,” and said that the Mueller investigation had been “manufactured by McCabe’s boss James Comey based upon a fraudulent and corrupt Dossier.” In a statement on Thursday confirming his decision to resign, Dowd said, “I love the President and wish him well.” Notwithstanding statements like these, the President clearly feels that the current team—which also includes Jay Sekulow and Ty Cobb, as the in-house White House representative—hasn’t played enough hardball.

The cascade of events began with the addition of Joseph diGenova to Trump’s defense team. Like so many recent Trump hires (and like Sekulow), diGenova is a familiar face on cable news and can be counted on to make ever more extreme arguments on behalf of the President. (DiGenova has suggested that there is a secret conspiracy against Trump within the F.B.I.) Dowd didn’t generally appear on television and only rarely gave quotes on the record to reporters. That sort of reticence is a dereliction of duty in Trump’s view of the responsibilities of a defense lawyer.

Cobb’s days appear to be numbered as well. He has long been the lead dove on the President’s legal team, at least relative to his colleagues. He has been an advocate of coöperation with the Mueller investigation, and he has supervised the delivery of thousands of documents to the prosecutor and coördinated the interviews of White House employees. This process has gone fairly smoothly—something that probably counts as a strike against Cobb at this point. As illustrated by Trump’s increasingly strident tweets about Mueller and his investigation in the past week—“A total WITCH HUNT with massive conflicts of interest!”—the President wants confrontation, not coöperation, with the prosecutor. DiGenova will surely deliver on that score.

Trump’s jittery disquiet is probably exacerbated by his legal problems on other fronts. He now faces three lawsuits from three women, which are based on his alleged sexual misconduct. Stephanie Clifford, a.k.a. Stormy Daniels, the adult-film star, Karen McDougal, the former Playboy playmate, and Summer Zervos, a former contestant on “The Apprentice,” all now have pending cases to the President is a party. Some or all of them may yet be dismissed without further embarrassment to him, but the odds are growing that at least one will proceed to the discovery stage. That will mean that Trump may have to give sworn statements in these cases as well, compounding his worries about a possible interview with Mueller.

As Trump has ratcheted up his rhetoric against Mueller, Republicans in Congress have offered their usual throat-clearing expressions of concern. They wanly assert that Trump shouldn’t fire Mueller. But they have given no sign that they will do anything to stop the firing—such as passing a law to protect Mueller’s independence. And they show even less inclination for the task of possibly punishing the President, either by impeaching him or by holding him to account in some other way, if he actually does fire Mueller. They may face a similar test once Mueller delivers his findings—assuming he’s still on the job at that point. But for now, all in all, the reaction from congressional Republicans, including to Dowd’s departure, suggests that the President has what he wants for getting rid of his pursuer: a green light.