Hours after The Washington Post reported that Robert Mueller, the straitlaced special counsel appointed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to oversee the Trump-Russia affair, was investigating President Donald Trump for possible obstruction of justice, Fox News host Sean Hannity stood on the baseball field where Republican congressman Steve Scalise was shot Wednesday morning and issued a declaration of war. “Mueller and Rod Rosenstein? Recuse themselves, resign immediately,” he said, his face illuminated by a bank of lights near the dugout where a deranged Bernie Sanders supporter had opened fire. “This is the biggest act—I want you to pay attention—of retribution we have ever seen from the deep state in the history of this country. Just as we have been saying on this program, it has now turned into a political witch hunt against the president of the United States.”

Hannity, one of the president’s most ardent defenders, has always had a flair for the dubiously dramatic. Whether or not the symbolism was deliberate, the baseball field was a loaded backdrop for a partisan rallying cry. But Hannity had a particular ax to grind with the former F.B.I. director turned special counsel. “Robert Mueller, this guy has more conflicts of interest than, by the way, than we can count on this show, which are also violations of federal law,” he fumed. “Mueller and [James] Comey have been close friends for a long time. Comey admitted he leaked the memo to The New York Times, to the press, hoping it would bring about a special counsel which, by the way, turned out to be his best buddy, his B.F.F. Robert Mueller.”

Panicked White House aides, responding to musings by longtime Trump confidant Chris Ruddy that the president was considering firing Mueller, have reportedly cautioned him that pulling the trigger would ignite a political firestorm that even a compliant Republican Congress might struggle to contain. But Hannity’s diatribe showed that on the far-right, there is an insatiable appetite for the president to fight back against what his most fervent defenders increasingly see as an act of subterfuge by the deep state. “Republicans are delusional if they think the special counsel is going to be fair,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who is writing a biography of the president, wrote on Twitter early Monday. “Look who he is hiring. Check FEC reports. Time to rethink.”

Less than a month earlier, Gingrich had praised Mueller as a “superb choice to be special counsel” with an “impeccable” reputation for honesty and integrity.” But in recent days, as the investigations by the F.B.I. and three congressional committees have accelerated and expanded, conservatives have closed ranks—and begun questioning Mueller’s motives. On Tuesday, Breitbart News published an interview with former F.B.I. assistant director James Kallstrom, who cast doubt on Mueller’s ability to be impartial in the investigation. “Bob Mueller and Jim Comey are the best of friends and have been for over two decades,” he told Breitbart. “How do you appoint a special counsel who is a longtime friend?” (Mueller and Comey have worked together in various capacities since 9/11, and in 2013, Washingtonian magazine called them “close partners and close allies”.)

Kallstrom’s argument only fueled a simmering belief among the far right that Mueller, despite his sterling reputation, could not do this job, and had a vested interest in protecting his friend. “Mueller needs to resign– that’s what a guy with unimpeachable integrity does when he realizes his personal relationships give the appearance of impropriety,” pro-Trump columnist Kurt Schlicter wrote on TownHall, citing a specific Justice Department regulation that prevents employees from being involved in criminal investigations involving people they have close ties to, or appear to have close ties to. “I hope this is merely the appearance of impropriety, though that is enough to trigger the regulation, and that this isn’t just another deep-state scam designed to subjugate forever the half of the country that, in desperation, sent Donald Trump to Washington to try and break the establishment’s death grip on power.”