Investigate the investigators has been a conservative mantra since the start of the special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, led by the special counsel. On Wednesday, the country’s top law-enforcement official said that he intended to do just that. “One of the things I want to do is pull together all the information from the various investigations that have gone on, including on the Hill and in the Department, and see if there are any remaining questions to be addressed,” Attorney General William Barr said at a hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee. It was Barr’s second straight day of testifying on Capitol Hill, his first public appearances since he received Mueller’s report. The Justice Department’s inspector general has been investigating how the Russia probe was conducted, including the process by which a federal judge issued a warrant to wiretap a Trump foreign-policy adviser named Carter Page. But what Barr was suggesting was different—more charged, more nakedly political—and it seemed to take everyone in the room aback.

“Can you share with us why you feel a need to do that?” Senator Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat from New Hampshire, asked.

“I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal,” Barr said. “It’s big deal. The generation I grew up in, which was the Vietnam War period, you know, people were all concerned about spying on the antiwar people and so forth by the government. And there were a lot of rules put in place to make sure that there’s an adequate basis before our law-enforcement agencies get involved in political surveillance. I’m not suggesting that those rules were violated. But I think it’s important to look at that. And I’m not just not talking about the F.B.I., necessarily, but intelligence agencies more broadly.”

Trying to draw some boundaries on the rhetoric, and ignoring the irony of a sitting Republican Attorney General invoking the plight of lefty activists, Shaheen replied, “You’re not suggesting, though, that spying occurred?”

Barr paused. He stammered a bit. Then he said, “I think spying did occur. Yes, I think spying did occur.” Now it was Shaheen who paused. “Well, let me, uh—” she managed. Barr jumped back in. “But the question is whether it was predicated, adequately predicated,” he said. “And I’m not suggesting it wasn’t.”

But that’s just what he was suggesting. It’s what his boss has been suggesting ever since he learned of the probe into potential ties between his campaign and Russia. “Terrible!” President Trump tweeted, in March 2017. “Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!” Most media outlets long ago stopped wondering if Trump had any “proof” to back up these claims. In the case of Page, the F.B.I. obtained a warrant from the federal court, known as the FISA court, that was established, in the nineteen-seventies, to prevent improper eavesdropping on Americans. And the warrant was issued after Page had stopped working for the Trump campaign. But, in conservative circles, on Fox News and on conservative Web sites, Trump’s declarations were taken as facts. Possible collusion, the very real convictions and guilty pleas of Trump’s campaign manager, lawyer, national-security adviser, and various other associates—these were never the “real” story. The real story lay elsewhere—and the political goal was the undermining of the Trump-Russia investigation. Now the Attorney General has joined the President in insinuating wrongdoing without offering evidence. Pressed later in the hearing if he had proof of improper surveillance, Barr replied, “I have no specific evidence that I would cite right now. I do have questions about it.”

Official Washington is in a holding pattern, waiting for Barr to release what he will of Mueller’s report. In the days since Mueller turned in his report, Democrats seem to have regained their footing, and look to not let this be the end of the Trump-Russia story. Barr’s appearances this week have given a preview of what the Administration’s posture will be in the coming days: full, “Lock her up!” Trump. It will get ugly.