In a letter sent to congressional leaders, Attorney General William Barr also said that “there are no plans to submit the report to the White House” before its release. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Mueller Report AG: Mueller report to be released 'by mid-April, if not sooner' William Barr writes he has 'no plans' to give Trump or the White House a chance to review the report before its release.

Attorney General William Barr said Friday he's prepared to share a redacted copy of special counsel Robert Mueller's report with lawmakers and the public by mid-April "if not sooner" and indicated he's prepared to testify to Congress by early May.

In a letter to Congress, Barr wrote he has "no plans" to give President Donald Trump or the White House a chance to review the report before its release, ensuring that there could not be broad claims of executive privilege. Barr cited Trump's public statements deferring to him.


“Everyone will soon be able to read it on their own,” Barr stated.

Barr emphasized that he would be removing four categories of information from the nearly-400-page report: grand jury information, information related to intelligence sources and methods, information pertinent to ongoing investigations and anything that could harm the "reputational interests" of "peripheral third parties." The scale of these redactions may determine how much of a fight Barr is in for with House Democrats, who have demanded the entire report and its underlying evidence.

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Trump on Friday said he has full confidence in Barr, adding, "if that's what he'd like to do, I have nothing to hide." He also repeated that the entire investigation is a "witch hunt." Barr, during his confirmation hearing, broke with the president and said Mueller wouldn't be involved in a witch hunt.

House Democrats don't appear willing to wait for Barr's timetable. Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) said an April 2 deadline set by his committee to access the full report "still stands." He said Congress expects to see the report without redactions and to review all of its underlying evidence by that date.

In addition, he and other Democrats are asking Barr to join them before a judge to release grand jury information so that Barr doesn't need to redact it.

"There is ample precedent for the Department of Justice sharing all of the information that the Attorney General proposes to redact to the appropriate congressional committees," Nadler said.

Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), the top Republican on the House Judiciary panel, said Friday in a tweet that Nadler “stands alone in setting arbitrary deadlines for that release and in calling the attorney general to break the law by releasing the report without redactions.”

There has been intense pressure on Barr to release the full report that Mueller submitted at the conclusion of his probe into the Trump campaign's links to Russian operatives working to interfere in the 2016 election. According to Barr, the special counsel concluded that Trump’s campaign did not criminally conspire with the Russian government to sway the election. But Mueller did not deliver a final verdict on whether the president obstructed justice.

In his letter, Barr bristled at what he described as an inaccurate characterization of the four-page memo he issued last week regarding Mueller's report. Barr said he never intended that memo to be construed as an exhaustive summary of Mueller's findings. Rather, he said, it was a summary of Mueller's "principal conclusions" -- the "bottom line" of his findings.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) criticized Barr on Thursday for going beyond Mueller's report and deciding that Trump should be absolved of obstruction of justice even though Mueller found evidence to support both sides of the question. Mueller explicitly opted to "not exonerate" Trump, a head-scratching phrase that has led Democrats to demand more details from the report itself.

Barr's initial summary of Mueller's conclusions also omitted central swaths of the areas Mueller investigated, including whether he reached counterintelligence findings that might show whether any Americans were compromised by Russians even if they committed no crimes. Barr said the report was nearly 400 pages but that it also included additional appendices and tables.

