Matthew Whitaker, the acting attorney general and a critic of the Russia probe, raised eyebrows Monday afternoon when he told reporters that Robert Mueller’s work is almost complete, and appeared to press the special counsel to bring the investigation to an even quicker end. “Right now, the investigation is—I think—close to being completed,” he said. “I hope we can get the report from Director Mueller as soon as possible.”

The public remarks on the inquiry into the Kremlin’s interference in the 2016 election were Whitaker’s first since Donald Trump tapped him to oversee it in November, and they were met with deserved skepticism. An opponent of the probe who had previously encouraged the administration to rein Mueller in, Whitaker’s motives in making such a statement were unclear. Whitaker told the media he had been “fully briefed” on the matter, yet the extent to which Trump’s acting attorney general is up to date on Mueller’s timeline is foggy. The uncertainty surrounding Whitaker’s comments raised alarm bells for prominent observers of the probe, including Neal Katyal, a former acting solicitor general under Barack Obama, who cautioned that “everything [Whitaker] says should be doubted,” and CNN chief legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, who blasted the acting attorney general as “utterly unqualified.”

“I have seen actual deer in actual headlights who express themselves more clearly than the attorney general of the United States did there,” Toobin said on CNN. “He cannot express himself about a matter of extreme importance—the Mueller investigation—and he has raised all these questions about decisions he’s going to review. What is he even talking about?”

Indeed, while Mueller has long been believed to be working on at least part of his final report, his indictment last week of Roger Stone, a longtime Trump confidant and informal adviser, hinted there is more to come from the probe. “There is much about this indictment and other public aspects of the Mueller probe that I do believe support the conclusion that the investigation into whether or not there was a criminal conspiracy is not yet over,” Mimi Rocah, a former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, wrote in the Daily Beast on Tuesday.

Still, both Republicans and Democrats appear anxious for Mueller to finish his work—albeit for very different reasons. Trump and his allies are reportedly bracing for a potentially “horrific” report about the president, and are planning to attempt to refute it. Democrats, meanwhile, are meeting in the House of Representatives on Tuesday to discuss the investigation—with some in the ranks itching to make impeachment moves against Trump, despite party leadership maintaining that the special counsel should first be allowed to finish his work.

All this, of course, is playing out amid worries that Whitaker—or William Barr, Trump’s nominee to replace Jeff Sessions at the top of the Justice Department—could try to block the report’s release. Trump’s acting attorney general reignited these concerns in his remarks Monday: “I am comfortable that the decisions that were made are going to be reviewed . . . through the various means we have,” he said. Among lawmakers, there appears to be bipartisan support for the report’s ultimate release. Senators Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, and Chuck Grassley, a Republican, have introduced new legislation to ensure that the report is made public. “Our legislation would guarantee that every Special Counsel does a report complete with findings and evidence—and that it be directly disclosed to Congress and the American people,” Blumenthal said in a statement with Grassley on Monday. “Our bipartisan bill makes it the default that the American people have access to the full story, putting in context any conclusions with findings and evidence.”

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