Barr did not address the possibility that DOJ ethics officials could advise him to recuse himself from the probe in his prepared remarks. But he did try to walk his fatalistic view of Mueller’s inquiry back a bit. “I wrote the memo as a former Attorney General who has often weighed in on legal issues of public importance” and did not intend to argue that a sitting president can never obstruct justice, he said.

But the explanation provided little comfort to Coons. “In our private meeting, Barr made a similar characterization of that memo,” he told reporters on Monday. “And I am not satisfied.” Coons said it struck him as “unusual” for a former attorney general to write such a lengthy, “unsolicited” document while holding a full-time legal job. “That would’ve required a fair amount of investment of time and resources,” Coons said. He added that he was struck in particular by Barr’s comment that he did not seek out the attorney-general job when “he essentially tried out for it” with the memo. Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, plans to ask Barr who paid him, if anyone, for the time it took him to write and research the memo, whether he discussed it with the White House, and how it was transmitted to the Department of Justice.

Barr, who reportedly interviewed to be Trump’s defense lawyer last year, shared the memo with members of Trump’s legal team around the time he submitted it to Rosenstein and Assistant Attorney General Steven Engel, according to a letter Barr wrote to Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham late Monday night. White House Special Counsel Emmet Flood and White House Counsel Pat Cipollone both received a copy of the memo, Barr told Graham, and he discussed its contents with Trump’s lawyers Marty and Jane Raskin and Jay Sekulow, as well as with Jared Kushner’s attorney Abbe Lowell. “My purpose was not to influence public opinion on the issue, but rather to make sure that all of the lawyers involved carefully considered the potential implications of the [obstruction] theory,” Barr wrote.

Democrats are also eager to gain assurances about the fate of the Mueller report itself. In recent days, Rudy Giuliani, one of Trump’s personal lawyers, has said he hopes Trump’s legal team will get to review and “correct” any report before it is given to Congress or made public. Notably, Barr did not commit in his prepared remarks to releasing the full contents of such a report, saying only that he would “provide as much transparency” as possible about the “results” of Mueller’s work.

The Justice Department didn’t respond to a request for comment on whether Barr’s view of the obstruction probe has changed at all in light of the Times report. But Barr acknowledged in the memo that he was “in the dark” about many of the facts of the investigation, and on Monday he endorsed Mueller’s overall mission of exposing and deterring foreign election interference. “It is imperative that people have confidence in the outcome of elections,” Barr wrote. “I believe that our country must respond to any foreign interference with the strongest measures.”

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.