When Donald Trump ally Roger Stone first proposed that, in lieu of firing him outright, the White House appoint a second special counsel to investigate Robert Mueller, legal experts dismissed the idea as senseless. In fact, Ira Matetsky, a litigation lawyer at the Manhattan-based firm Ganfer & Shore, told my colleague Abigail Tracy that overtly targeting Mueller may have hurt Stone’s cause: “He has reduced the chances that this could go anywhere by almost advertising that it will have a blatantly result-oriented motive.” But Trump’s legal team has reportedly taken a shine to the idea, however flawed it may be, and is entertaining it as a viable legal option in what appears to be the natural culmination of the right’s escalating attempts to sow doubts about Mueller’s credibility and, by extension, the credibility of his investigation into the president.

In theory, this second special counsel would look into Mueller’s role in the Obama administration’s 2010 decision to allow Rosatom, a Russian nuclear-energy agency, to acquire a controlling stake in Uranium One, a Canadian firm with a major mining license in the United States. The working theory on the right is that Russian operatives effectively paid off Hillary Clinton, who was then Secretary of State, to approve the deal—critics argue that Mueller, who led the F.B.I. at the time, should have done more to investigate the alleged quid pro quo. Anti-Mueller sentiments were further stoked when The New York Times revealed that Mueller had fired his lead investigator, Peter Strzok, amid questions about his political bias.

During testimony before the House Judiciary Committee last month, Attorney General Jeff Sessions pushed back on reports that he was considering appointing special counsel No. 2—“You can have your idea, but sometimes we have to study what the facts are and to evaluate whether it meets the standards it requires,” he told lawmakers when pressed, adding that “I would say ‘looks like’ is not enough basis to appoint a special counsel.” But a Fox News report on Monday night that Bruce Ohr, a senior Justice Department official, was demoted last week after he’d concealed the fact that his wife worked for Fusion G.P.S. (the firm responsible for the anti-Trump dossier) appears to have pushed Team Trump over the edge. “The Department of Justice and F.B.I. cannot ignore the multiple problems that have been created by these obvious conflicts of interests,” Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow told Axios. “These new revelations require the appointment of a special counsel to investigate.”

The renewed push is yet another offshoot of what has become a grassroots campaign against the special counsel that was introduced by fringe theorists like Stone, and gradually leaked into discourse at the highest levels—“I will be challenging Rs and Ds on Senate Judiciary Committee to support a Special Counsel to investigate ALL THINGS 2016—not just Trump and Russia,” Senator Lindsey Graham, Trump’s favorite golf buddy, tweeted on Friday. Fox News and The Wall Street Journal editorial page have lead the charge, and new questions about the ethics waver the D.O.J. granted Mueller to enable him to lead the Russia investigation in the first place are likely to add fuel to the building inferno. As former Justice Department spokesman Matthew Miller told The Washington Post, “The eventual goal . . . is to delegitimize Mueller in such a way that he can either be fired or can be ignored if he concludes the president broke the law.”

Neither Trump nor his army of lawyers has moved directly against the special counsel, even taking pains to appear compliant. The president’s legal team emphasized to Axios that they “respect Mueller and trust him, and want to get to the finish line with him.” They seem content, in other words, to put on a friendly face and keep the president above the fray while Trump’s ardent right-wing support base does his dirty work. Even if no second special counsel is appointed—an outcome that seems likely given the plan’s numerous legal pitfalls—the mere suggestion that one ought to be could prove more effective than any legal strategy the White House has cobbled together so far.