WASHINGTON — Attorney General William P. Barr recently approved making public new details about a former F.B.I. informant at the heart of conservatives’ allegations about the Russia investigation, deciding to release information that had been blacked out in a highly anticipated inspector general’s report due out on Monday.
A representative from the office of the Justice Department inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, told the former F.B.I. informant, Christopher Steele, on Sunday that the Justice Department had decided to allow for the release of the information, two people briefed on the situation said late on Sunday.
Mr. Steele was given no details about the information itself, nor was he told how it would affect the report’s portrayal of him, the people said. Mr. Horowitz is expected to be critical of Mr. Steele, a British former spy who compiled a dossier of salacious, unverified information about President Trump. F.B.I. officials relied to some degree on the dossier to seek a court order for a wiretap of a former Trump campaign adviser, and the president’s allies have seized on the issue to make broad claims about the sprawling Russia investigation.