A total of 522 inmates were moved to home confinement following Barr’s directive last week, according to the Bureau of Prisons.

Barr’s public comments supporting early releases for some inmates seemed to be in tension with remarks Trump made Thursday, where he lashed out at state and local officials for endangering the public by releasing convicted criminals and said he might even step in to try to halt such releases.

Asked about what he was doing to protect prisoners, Trump seemed to downplay the danger to most inmates, arguing that many are young. He also appeared to boast that the federal government had not followed the states' lead of making additional releases due to the pandemic.

“I have not done that at all, but some states are letting people out of prison. Some people are getting out that are very serious criminals, in some states. And I don't like that. I don't like it,” Trump said during a regular White House briefing. “But it's a city or state thing in certain cases, as you know. I think maybe Philadelphia comes to mind. ... We don't like it. The people don't like it. And we're looking in to see if I have the right to stop it in some cases.”

Spokespeople for the Justice Department and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Trump’s view on early release for federal inmates and whether he was consulted on the Justice Department’s release plans.

Barr's new directive stresses that public safety concerns must be taken into account when considering whom to release.

"While we have a solemn obligation to protect the people in BOP custody, we also have an obligation to protect the public," the attorney general wrote. "That means we cannot simply release prison populations en masse into the streets. Doing so would pose profound risks to the public from released prisoners engaging in additional criminal activity, potentially including violence or heinous sex offenses."

While Barr emphasized that early releases must be assessed on a case-by-case basis, he said that some precautions normally taken in such situations could be waived in the current crisis, such as GPS monitoring for those being sent home.

Nearly 175,000 people are in federal criminal custody, chiefly in federally run prisons and centers run by private contractors. However, the vast majority of those incarcerated in the U.S. — roughly 2 million people — are in state and local criminal justice systems and serve in those prisons or jails.

Barr's latest move to step up releases came as lawmakers, criminal justice reform advocates and lawyers for inmates pressed the department to move more quickly to reduce the danger of coronavirus sweeping through federal prisons.

Two leaders of the House Judiciary Committee wrote to him Monday to urge more widespread releases as well as other steps to limit the virus' spread.

“We hope you will institute aggressive measures to release medically compromised, elderly and pregnant prisoners, as well as universal testing in BOP facilities — to protect everyone. … Urgent action is required because lives depend on it,” wrote Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.), chair of the Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security subcommittee.

Nadler, a frequent Barr critic, unequivocally welcomed the attorney general's latest directive.

“Today, we learned that Attorney General Barr has made a key finding related to the COVID-19 pandemic that triggers expanded authority under the CARES Act to transfer prisoners to home confinement. This is a positive development, and I urge appropriate and swift use of this power," the House Judiciary chairman said.

Despite Barr's move Friday, the Justice Department has continued to resist efforts by lawyers to involve the courts in making early release decisions. Prosecutors have argued for strict enforcement of a provision in federal law that says prisoners cannot seek release through a judge until their requests for release have been pending at the Bureau of Prisons for at least 30 days, or until the prison system makes a decision and internal appeals are exhausted.

"That process is particularly important at a time when the BOP is facing an influx of similar requests, and there is a pronounced need for the orderly and consistent resolution of these requests on the timeline that Congress enacted in the statute," federal prosecutors in New York wrote in one such case Thursday.

At a press conference last week where Barr discussed his desire to increase early releases, he said he wanted all inmates to be quarantined for 14 days before release in order to make sure they were not carrying the virus out of prison into the community. It was not immediately clear how hundreds of inmates had been released in the past week while accommodating those concerns.