Amid the heated interrogation of William Barr on Wednesday, during which Donald Trump’s attorney general ducked, weaved, and generally stonewalled lawmakers investigating whether the president obstructed justice, Democrats on Capitol Hill are beginning to coalesce around a new political strategy in the wake of the Mueller report. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is firmly opposed to impeaching Trump—“he’s just not worth it,” she has said—and so Democrats are considering another soft target: the attorney general himself.

The case for impeaching Barr, such as it is, gained traction on Tuesday when it was reported that the special counsel had expressed serious concerns with Barr’s initial four-page summation of his 488-page report. Mueller wrote that Barr’s letter—which the A.G. has since said was merely the “principal conclusions” of the Trump-Russia probe—“did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this Office’s work and conclusions.” This, Mueller wrote to Barr, caused “public confusion about critical aspects of the results” of his investigation that threatened to “undermine” public confidence in the entire probe.

Democrats are still fuming over Barr’s truculent performance on the day the redacted report was made public, when the attorney general spun Mueller’s findings as exculpatory. So are current and former staffers within the special counsel’s office, who quickly made their displeasure known to The New York Times, among other outlets. Mueller’s letter to Barr, which was sent on March 27 but became public on Wednesday, just minutes before Barr began testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, was even more extraordinary. As F.B.I. veteran Chuck Rosenberg explained to Politico, Justice officials usually go out of their way not to create a record of interagency disputes. Instead of picking up the phone, Mueller went full James Comey and put it down on paper.

When Barr appeared before Congress on April 9, the attorney general played dumb when asked about reports of discontent in Mueller’s ranks—a claim Democrats now know was untrue. “Why did you say you are not aware of concerns, when weeks before your testimony, Mr. Mueller had expressed concerns to you. That’s a very simple thing,” Senator Patrick Leahy said during the Judiciary hearing on Wednesday. Barr denied and dissembled. “I answered a question. And the question was relating to unidentified members who were expressing frustration over the accuracy relating to findings,” he shot back. “I don’t know what that refers to at all. I talked directly to Bob Mueller, not members of his team.”

But that’s hardly the only incident in which Barr might have perjured himself. During another congressional hearing on April 10, Barr told Senator Chris Van Hollen, “I don’t know whether Bob Mueller supported my conclusion” that Trump should not be charged with obstruction of justice. In fact, Barr knew exactly what Mueller thought of his conclusions: he thought it was contextless and confusing. At the time, Barr had been in possession of Mueller’s letter for two weeks.

More than a dozen Democrats have called on the attorney general to step down. Others have suggested he be held in contempt. In an interview with the Post, Van Hollen said Barr “must resign” because he believed his answer was “completely misleading because he was well aware of the fact that Bob Mueller had raised questions with the substance of the conclusions stated in the attorney general’s letter.” Others—including, but not limited to, House members Eric Swalwell, Maxine Waters, and Kathleen Rice—have floated impeachment.

It goes without saying that Barr will not willingly resign. For Democrats, however, impeaching Barr represents a tantalizing—and cathartic—alternative. It “would face the same difficulty and obstacle as removing the president through an impeachment proceeding,” Congressman Adam Schiff said Wednesday on CNN, acknowledging Republican control of the Senate. But, he confirmed, Democrats are “having that conversation.”