Democrats in Washington found themselves Friday confronting an unwelcome surprise conclusion following the release of the final report by special counsel Robert Mueller: Maybe we should impeach President Trump after all.

Ever since taking back the House of Representatives in January, Democratic leaders have carefully modulated the demands for impeachment from their activist base. First, they stressed the need to wait for the outcome of Mueller’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Last month, House speaker Nancy Pelosi splashed cold water on the idea of impeachment, telling The Washington Post’s Joe Heim, “Impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path, because it divides the country. And he’s just not worth it.”

The idea that Democrats would focus on defeating Trump at the ballot box in 2020 had become accepted conventional wisdom in recent weeks, particularly after attorney general Bill Barr’s late March summary of Mueller’s conclusions seemed to indicate that Mueller’s findings had resulted in what Trump himself declared on Twitter as “Total EXONERATION!”

As Mueller sees it, Congress has a unique role in sorting through questions of presidential malfeasance.

Yet as the hours passed Thursday, and Washington digested the 448 pages submitted by Mueller’s Special Counsel Office, a sense of surprise and almost dread descended on Democratic leaders: Mueller appeared to have delivered a report that was all but an explicit impeachment referral, examining in lurid and compelling detail at least 10 specific instances where it appeared President Trump had sought to obstruct the special counsel’s Russia investigation, through a mix of official actions, private badgering of witnesses, and public statements.

Moreover, contrary to what Barr had repeatedly suggested—including just an hour before the report’s public release—the report makes clear that Mueller’s refusal to make a “traditional prosecutorial decision” was explicitly guided by the fact that he believed the Justice Department could not indict the president while in office. Barr had seemed to indicate that Mueller had failed to find obstruction.

The report clearly says the opposite. Mueller found plenty of Trump actions that could be considered obstruction but felt that it was not his role to prosecute them. “If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the president did not obstruct justice, we would so state,” Mueller’s report says. “Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, however, we are unable to reach that judgment. The evidence we obtained about the President’s actions and intent presents difficult issues that prevent us from conclusively determining that no criminal conduct occurred. Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”

The presidential obstruction was clear in its objective and utilized, corruptly, the office’s own powers. If anything, Trump was stymied only by associates who refused to go along. “Our investigation found multiple acts by the President that were capable of exerting undue influence over law enforcement investigations, including the Russian-interference and obstruction investigations,” Mueller wrote. “The President’s efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests.”

That means, ultimately, the question remains unsettled. And as Mueller sees it, Congress has a unique role in sorting through questions of presidential malfeasance.

Pressure for Congress to act mounted almost by the hour.

That combo—a more damning report than expected and an explicit mention of Congress’s role—reawakened questions of impeachment in ways not seen since a momentary kerfuffle early in the year, when a BuzzFeed report seemed to indicate Mueller would present evidence that Trump had “directed” his former lawyer Michael Cohen to lie to Congress. (The Special Counsel’s Office ended up issuing an unprecedented statement refuting that reporting, though later testimony by Cohen himself on Capitol Hill made clear the matter hinged on more subtle interpretations of Trump’s conduct. As Cohen said, “At the same time I was actively negotiating in Russia for him, he would look me in the eye and tell me there’s no business in Russia and then go out and lie to the American people by saying the same thing. In his way, he was telling me to lie.” BuzzFeed, buoyed by some of Mueller’s own reporting Thursday, issued an update last night following the report’s release.)