In a second straight day of testimony before the release of the special counsel report, the attorney general said he would not take out criticisms of President Trump.
WASHINGTON — Attorney General William P. Barr said on Wednesday that even after he released a partly blacked-out copy of the Mueller report, most likely next week, he would work to share with Congress some of the more sensitive information that he redacted.
Mr. Barr also told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee that while he intends to black out derogatory information about “peripheral third parties,” he would not take out criticisms of public office holders, including President Trump.
Democrats have attacked Mr. Barr for releasing only a four-page letter on March 24 with what he called the report’s “bottom-line findings”: that the evidence the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, gathered did not show any conspiracy between Mr. Trump’s associates and Russia, and that while the special counsel took no position on whether Mr. Trump illegally obstructed justice, Mr. Barr deemed him cleared.
Lawmakers have demanded to see the unredacted report, a request Mr. Barr tried to address on Wednesday.
“I intend to take up with the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, the chairmen and ranking members of each, what other areas they feel they have a need to have access to the information and see if I can work to accommodate that,” Mr. Barr told the senators.
His assurance did not mollify them. Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, told him that any attempt to hide pieces of the report would “only fuel suspicions that the Justice Department, which represents the United States, is playing the role of President Trump’s defense team.”
Even while Mr. Barr sought to reassure lawmakers that he would treat the report in a transparent and fair manner, he also made a startling statement sure to please the president — that investigative steps by the F. B. I. in 2016 to understand links between the Trump campaign and Russia amounted to “spying” on Mr. Trump’s campaign, a portrayal law enforcement officials have vehemently denied.
[Read about the attorney general’s assertion that intelligence agencies spied on the Trump campaign.]
The attorney general was testifying about the Justice Department budget for the second straight day. But as happened on Tuesday, when he appeared before a House panel, questions about the Trump-Russia investigation led by Mr. Mueller and his still-secret full report dominated the hearing.
