While Donald Trump and his legal team reiterated over the weekend that he has no plans to fire Robert Mueller, fear is building inside Washington that the president’s strategy of discrediting the special prosecutor is entering a dangerous new phase—and that right-wing media, led by Fox News, is laying the groundwork to move against Mueller.

Trump’s legal team has outwardly maintained cordial relations with the special prosecutor's office, and has repeatedly expressed its confidence that the Russia probe will conclude within weeks, exonerating the president. But as Mueller edges closer to Trump’s inner circle, legal team has grown increasingly aggressive, actively stoking the feedback loop of rising support on the right for some kind of purge within the Justice Department, which some Republicans argue is compromised.

The evolving strategy was laid bare over the weekend, when Kory Langhofer, an attorney for the Trump transition, sent a letter to the Republican-controlled Congress accusing Mueller of unlawfully obtaining thousands of Trump campaign and transition team e-mails from the General Services Administration, which provided facilities to Trump For America, Inc. “Although the Special Counsel’s Office was aware that the G.S.A. did not own or control the records in question, the Special Counsel’s Office has extensively used the materials in question, including portions that are susceptible to claims of privilege, and without notifying [Trump For America] or taking customary precautions to protect T.F.A.’s rights and privileges,” Langhofer wrote. (Mueller’s team swiftly denied the accusation, saying in a statement, “When we have obtained e-mails in the course of our ongoing criminal investigation, we have secured either the account owner’s consent or appropriate criminal process.”)

The letter to Congress had all the makings of a P.R. stunt. Rather than adjudicate the e-mail question in court, if and when Mueller brings charges, Langhofer made the dispute public, effectively playing to the jury by placing the issue before lawmakers who would ultimately be the ones to vote on impeachment. Trump, too, fed into right-wing hysteria when he declared that the situation was “Not looking good. It’s not looking good. It’s quite sad to see that. My people are very upset about it. . . . A lot of lawyers thought that was pretty sad.”

His overtures, as well as those of conservative media outlets, are beginning to create ripples among the ranks of the more moderate right. In an interview on ABC’s This Week, Senator John Cornyn said that he “has confidence” in Mueller, and cautioned against his firing, but added that he “would just think [Mueller] would be concerned about the appearance of conflicts of interest that would undermine the integrity of the investigation.” As a source close to the White House noted to Axios, “You’re starting to win over mainstream conservatives to the backlash over overreach.”

The president’s tone has set off alarm bells on the left, where Democrats are bracing themselves for his next move. A number of lawmakers fear that Trump will order Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to fire Mueller at the end of the week, just before Congress goes on recess. “That is Saturday massacre 2.0,” Congresswoman Jackie Speier, told a California radio station, in reference to President Richard Nixon ordering the firing of Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor investigating the Watergate scandal. “Without a doubt there would be an impeachment effort.” The Washington Post reported that liberal groups, too, are prepared for this eventuality. One coalition, “Trump Is Not Above the Law,” told the outlet that it has more than 400 demonstrations prepared to launch across the country should the president move against the special counsel.

Yet it remains unclear whether Trump will push for Mueller’s firing at all, particularly if he believes, as CNN reports, that the special counsel is on the verge of clearing his name. Sources familiar with the president’s recent conversations told the outlet that he “is boasting to friends and advisers that he expects Mueller to clear him of wrongdoing in the coming weeks,” adding that Trump seems “so convinced of his impending exoneration that he is telling associates Mueller will soon write a letter clearing him that Trump can brandish to Washington and the world.” The concept of such a letter, whether or not it materializes, may be the only thing standing between Mueller and an unceremonious ouster—and, by extension, a reckoning the likes of which Capitol Hill has rarely seen.