The MAGA punditry’s outsized influence over the president means their campaign against the so-called Mueller “holdovers” is likely not falling on deaf ears, especially given Trump’s fixation with what his defenders and detractors are saying about his administration in their frequent appearances on his favorite TV programs.

“I think that the White House understands that it has the support of the insurgent conservative punditry in this fight, because we see what the fight is,” said Schlicter, whose recent columns on the subject have run under headlines like “Time for Trump to Get His Godfather On” and “Burn Down the DOJ and Start Over.”

Tom Fitton, the president of the conservative activist group Judicial Watch, tweets several times a day about alleged “deep state corruption” at the Justice Department and last week described Stone’s sentencing recommendation as “Mueller holdover extortion.” Trump retweeted Fitton’s accusations of corruption at DOJ and the need to “clean house” there nearly a dozen times on Wednesday morning alone.