The courtroom was tense on Friday during the hearing for Paul Manafort, Donald Trump's former campaign chairman who is being charged with bank fraud, among other crimes.

According to CNN, presiding Judge T.S. Ellis III expressed “deep skepticism” over the bank fraud case against Manafort. Judge Ellis went as far as to question Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s motives, claiming that he’s using Manafort as a pawn in his plan to oust President Donald Trump from office.

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“You don't really care about Mr. Manafort's bank fraud," Ellis said to prosecutor Michael Dreeben, who is also deputy solicitor general.

While struggling to tamp down his temper (according to CNN), Ellis reportedly continued to claim that prosecutors were going after Manafort because of the opportunity it could bring to provide materials that would end in Trump’s “prosecution or impeachment."

"That's what you're really interested in," Ellis said.

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"We don't want anyone in this country with unfettered power. It's unlikely you're going to persuade me the special prosecutor has power to do anything he or she wants," Ellis continued. "The American people feel pretty strongly that no one has unfettered power."

Dreeben reportedly answered Ellis’ question “about how the investigation and its charges date back to before the Trump campaign formed,” according to CNN, to which Ellis then fired back: "None of that information has to do with information related to Russian government coordination and the campaign of Donald Trump."

According to CNN, Ellis ordered Mueller's prosecutors to hand over an unredacted version of an August 2 memo, the one in which Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein described the criminal investigations Mueller is authorized to investigate.

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Manafort has been indicted in two different venues — in Washington, DC, in October, and on additional charges in Virginia from February. Today’s hearing was for the Virginia case, in which Manafort is facing counts of filing false income tax returns, failure to report foreign bank and financial accounts, and bank fraud.

Manafort and his former business associate, Rick Gates, are also facing 12 criminal charges, including conspiracy against the United States, money laundering, failure to register as a foreign agent and knowingly making false statements under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The indictment report alleges that more than $75 million moved through offshore accounts that Manafort and Gates established during the time Manafort was Trump’s campaign manager during the summer of 2016.

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The Washington Post corroborated the tensions in a separate report about the hearing:

Ellis said the government wanted Manafort ... "[to] sing.” The judge put it another way, saying the special counsel set out to “turn the screws and get the information you really want.

According to the Washington Post, Ellis is “known to be tough on attorneys in court.”

“Judge Ellis has high expectations from counsel on both sides of any issue,” Timothy Belevetz, a former prosecutor in the Eastern District now with the firm Holland & Knight, told the Washington Post. “His interactions with counsel in the courtroom do not necessarily reflect where he’ll end up coming out, because he’s a thoughtful judge who takes into account and carefully analyzes what’s presented to him. But in the meantime, he probes counsel and does so thoroughly.”

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Ellis was appointed by President Ronald Reagan. However, Trump has been making an effort to appoint more federal judges; the Los Angeles Times reported that he is is ranked sixth among 19 presidents who have appointed the highest number of federal judges in their first year of presidency.