Former special counsel Robert Mueller will appear before Congress Wednesday for two much-hyped hearings concerning his report on the 2016 election. And while Mueller has been explicit that “the report is my testimony,” the Department of Justice reminded him Monday that he better stay in line. In a letter sent to Mueller responding to a request for guidance regarding “privilege or other legal bars,” Associate Deputy Attorney General Bradley Weinscheimer stressed to the former special counsel that his testimony “must remain within the boundaries of your public report because matters within the scope of your investigation were covered by executive privilege.”

The DOJ letter echoes Attorney General William Barr‘s opinion that Mueller’s impending testimony is no more than a “public spectacle,” as Weinscheimer states that the department believes Mueller’s testimony is “unnecessary under the circumstances.” The deputy A.G. notes, however, that the decision to testify “is yours to make in this case.” But while the decision may be Mueller’s, the DOJ still insists the testimony’s content is subject to their restrictions: In addition to sticking to the public report, the letter also informs Mueller that he must not disclose any information from portions of the report that have been redacted to the public, and that it is department policy not to “discuss the conduct of uncharged third-parties.” “Department witnesses should decline to address potentially privileged matters, thus affording the Department the full opportunity at a later date to consider particular questions and possible accommodations that may fulfill the committees’ legitimate need for information while protecting Executive Branch confidentiality interests,” the letter adds. Mueller spokesman Jim Popkin told Politico that the agency has not seen the contents of Mueller’s opening statement, though he is unsure whether the former special counsel has had discussions with DOJ about whether aspects of his testimony could be off-limits. “In terms of DOJ and the Hill, there have been discussions for purposes of scheduling and clearly…to understand what the expectations are,” Popkin said. “But they have not seen the [opening] statement. They’ve not provided the statement to either DOJ or anyone in the House.”

Weinscheimer’s letter marks the latest instance of the Justice Department taking pains to control what gets out about the Mueller investigation, following Barr’s initial memo offering up a more favorable interpretation of the findings and subsequent press conference to do damage control ahead of its public release. The assertion of executive privilege also continues one of the Trump administration’s favored stonewalling techniques, which they have taken to such extremes as not letting Hope Hicks tell Congress where her White House office was located. (The agency’s decision to allow Mueller to testify at all does break with President Donald Trump, who tweeted Monday that Mueller “should not be given another bite at the apple.”) This latest DOJ effort to limit how much can come out at the hearings, however, seems to play into Mueller’s own thinking, as the former special counsel has made clear that he intends for his testimony to be bound by his report. “I don’t think he needed that direction from the department, because he was very clear that that was his, and continues to be his, intention,” Lisa Monaco, Mueller’s former chief of staff at the FBI, said on CNN Monday about Mueller sticking to the report’s public findings. Should Mueller, who is now a private citizen, wish to go rogue, though, it’s unclear whether there’s anything Barr and his deputies can actually do about it. “These are private individuals who no longer work at the Department of Justice,” a Judiciary Committee official told Politico. “And although we acknowledge that these are career department officials who give quite a bit of deference to what the department says, the department cannot order them to do anything.”

The high likelihood that Mueller will stick to the script still isn’t lessening Democrats’ optimism that the testimony could be a boon to their cause, though. Democrats hope to ask tough questions at the hearings like whether Mueller believes Trump should be indicted after leaving office—a question House Intelligence chair Rep. Adam Schiff acknowledged is less likely to be answered than “the love affair in North Korea working out”—but they realize there’s still much to be gained from simply putting the report in the spotlight. “My fantasy is when I get my five minutes, I’m just going to have him read certain passages,” Rep. Jackie Speier told Axios. After all, many Americans—including many lawmakers—have still yet to read the Mueller report themselves. The thinking for Democrats seems to be that dispensing its contents through a televised news event instead of a 448-page tome will finally get its message across—and, they hope, rally more people to oppose Trump. “Most Americans, you know, in their busy lives haven’t had the opportunity to read that report,” Schiff said on CBS’s Face the Nation Sunday, adding that his committee wants “Bob Mueller to bring it to life.”