WASHINGTON — Attorney General William P. Barr ratcheted up his criticisms of the special counsel’s office and defended President Trump’s actions in a wide-ranging interview broadcast on Friday.

Mr. Barr distanced the Justice Department from the report on Mr. Trump’s attempts to interfere in the Russia investigation written by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III. Mr. Barr also said he could have skipped writing his controversial summary of the special counsel’s work if investigators had done more to prepare the report for public consumption.

And in an interview with CBS News from Alaska, where he had visited law enforcement officials, Mr. Barr also blamed his decision to release a four-page letter in March summarizing the report’s main conclusions, rather than releasing the report in its entirety, on the special counsel’s office.

Mr. Barr said that he had expected the special counsel to identify the material in the report protected by grand jury secrecy rules, so that it could be quickly redacted and the report released. Had that happened, he said that the redaction process would have taken only a few days and his letter would have been unnecessary.