This month, the president has been calling around regularly to old friends and informal advisers, some of whom tell The Daily Beast that they hadn’t heard from Trump for a long time, soliciting their views and advice on impeachment. In recent weeks, Trump has told confidants and administration officials that he wants Democratic leaders to somehow pay for what they’ve done to him, and he has revived his talk about wanting to sue liberal lawmakers such as Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, after the impeachment process in the House has concluded, according to two sources who’ve heard Trump discuss this over the past three weeks.

It’s unclear, as typically is the case with Trump, if he’ll end up following through on this legal threat. Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani—a central figure in the president’s scandalous, impeachment-triggering crusade to recruit the Ukrainian government into investigating the Bidens—told The Daily Beast on Wednesday that there has, indeed, been recent “movement” on a Schiff-related lawsuit, though he wouldn’t elaborate when asked what he meant by that. For many years, Trump has been known for frivolous lawsuits and hurling wild legal threats, and said in October that he told his lawyers they should sue Schiff even if their legal defeat is certain or the case gets thrown out.