After initially shielding President Donald Trump from the full brunt of the Mueller report's findings, Attorney General William Barr is reportedly shifting his attention to another frequent object of Trump's ire: the F.B.I. According to Bloomberg, Barr has assembled a team to investigate how the law enforcement agency handled their probe into the Trump campaign before it was taken over by Robert Mueller.

Barr said during his hearing before the House Appropriations Committee Tuesday that he was "reviewing the conduct of the [FBI's] investigation and trying to get my arms around all the aspects of the counterintelligence investigation that was conducted during the summer of 2016." Bloomberg reports the investigation will include allegations that the F.B.I.'s probe was tainted by anti-Trump bias and was spurred by a "pattern of actions" undertaken by F.B.I. officials, including a criminal investigation into former attorney general Jeff Sessions that was closed without charges. The newly-assembled team will operate separately from another Justice Department probe into the F.B.I.'s FISA process during the Russia investigation, which is being undertaken by the Inspector General. That investigation is expected to wrap up in May or June, Barr told lawmakers Tuesday.

The allegation that the F.B.I. was packed with members of the Resistance hellbent on taking down Trump has emerged as something of a Republican pet project during Trump's presidency, as lawmakers allied with the president seek a counter-narrative to combat the Mueller probe. House Republicans launched full-scale investigations into the agency during their time as the majority party, and Sen. Lindsay Graham promised in March to investigate the matter and "how [the Mueller report] got off the rails" in the Senate Judiciary Committee he leads. Barr's decision to join their insurgence with his own team, naturally, is being met with open arms: “That’s great news he’s looking into how this whole thing started back in 2016,” Rep. Jim Jordan told Bloomberg. “That’s something that has been really important to us. It’s what we’ve been calling for.”

Of course, one of the biggest proponents of Barr's new plan is likely to be Trump himself, who has frequently taken to Twitter to rail against "Lyin' James Comey" and the "corrupt former leaders of the FBI." While Barr's new probe may earn him brownie points from his boss, it won't do much to help the already-growing narrative that Barr is putting protecting Trump above all else, as evidenced by his controversial summary of the Mueller report and continued refusal to release it to Congress unredacted. As Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff noted on Twitter Tuesday: "Trump got his Roy Cohn."