WASHINGTON — Attorney General William Barr testified Tuesday that he thinks he will be able to release special counsel Robert Mueller’s report “within a week,” and that he will color-code redacted information so the public will know why various material is being veiled.

The assertion came during an appearance before members of the House Appropriations Committee, where questions about Barr’s handling of the report on whether Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign colluded with Russia dominated what otherwise would have been a routine budget hearing.

Over 2?½ hours, Barr addressed a range of Democrats’ concerns about Mueller’s report, offering new details on how and why he quickly distilled and release its principal conclusions.

Barr notably said that Mueller declined an opportunity to review the four-page letter he sent to Congress revealing the investigation’s “bottom line” conclusions, although he conceded that Mueller’s team might have preferred for the attorney general to have released more information initially.

He said he did not intend to ask a judge to allow him to release grand-jury material that Mueller generated, although he also said he did not anticipate shielding any elements because of executive privilege.

And — having told lawmakers previously that his department was scrubbing the report with an eye on a mid-April release — Barr confirmed the Justice Department was on course to make the report public in the next seven days.

“This process is going along very well, and my original timetable of being able to release this by mid-April stands, and I think that, from my standpoint, within a week I will be in a position to release the report to the public,” Barr said.

Barr’s handling of the nearly 400-page report has roiled Washington in recent weeks, with Democrats pressing to learn the full scope of what the special counsel’s investigation found.

The House Appropriations Committee is not among those examining President Donald Trump, his finances and his foreign contacts, and only one member of the subcommittee that questioned Barr on Tuesday also sits on any of those panels that are. But Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee had provided members with a list of suggested questions, and as appropriators the lawmakers do have leverage: They could withhold or put conditions on the Justice Department’s budget.

“I will consider whatever it takes to get people to see this report,” said Rep. Jose Serrano, D-N.Y., chairman of the Appropriations commerce, justice, science and related agencies subcommittee. “This report is too important to all of us.”

Barr’s four-page synopsis of Mueller’s report said that the special counsel did not find that anyone in Trump’s campaign conspired with Russia to interfere in the election and that Mueller did not reach a conclusion about whether Trump sought to obstruct justice. Barr wrote that he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein weighed the evidence themselves and determined that they could not make a case that Trump obstructed justice.

Democrats have criticized that bare-bones description, and some on Mueller’s team have told associates that they are frustrated with the limited information made available about their work.

Of Mueller’s team, Barr conceded Tuesday, “I suspect that they probably wanted more put out.” But he said he was “not interested in putting out summaries or trying to summarize because I think any summary, regardless of who prepares it, not only runs the risk of being under-inclusive or over-inclusive but also would trigger a lot of discussion and analysis that really should have weighed everything coming out at once.”

Barr said that Mueller’s team “did not play a role in drafting” his letter to Congress.