One day after President Obama said he was “pleased to announce that BP has agreed to set aside $20 billion” to pay for damages along the Gulf Coast, a top administration official on Thursday said the deal has not been finalized, adding that government and BP officials still need to “flesh out” exactly how the system will work.

“The Department of Justice has been actively involved in the structuring of that agreement, and those conversations are on-going,” Attorney General Eric Holder said at a press conference in Washington. “The framework has certainly been put in place, but there are on-going conversations to … put flesh on that framework.”

Negotiations over the $20 billion, which will be put in an escrow account and administered by an independent party,
are separate and “walled off” from civil and criminal investigations currently underway by the Justice Department, according to Holder. He said the Justice Department is “aggressively” pursuing actions against those accountable.

“Let me be clear, I don’t apologize for the Justice Department’s role in this matter, and I don’t apologize for the way in which this administration has approached [it],” he said. “We have dealt with this issue in a tough way to ensure that Americans who did no wrong will be compensated, that we do all that we can to protect our environment, and that not a penny comes from American taxpayers to do both of those things.”

His remarks came during an unrelated press conference at the Justice Department announcing what Holder called the “largest collective enforcement effort ever brought to bear in confronting mortgage fraud.” Across town, on Capitol Hill, BP executives were being grilled about the Gulf Coast oil spill by members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. During the House hearing, one Republican took aim at Holder and apologized to the BP executives.

“I think it is a tragedy of the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown, in this case, a $20 billion shakedown, with the attorney general of the United States … participating in what amounts to a $20 billion slush fund that’s unprecedented in our nation’s history, that’s got no legal standing, and which sets, I think, a terrible precedent for the future,” Rep. Joe Barton, R-Tex., said.

Barton went on to note that the U.S. legal system is centered around “due process,” adding, “So I apologize.”

Vice President Joe Biden described Barton’s comments as “astounding” and “incredibly insensitive,” saying it’s “outrageous” to suggest that BP shouldn’t be asked to set aside billions of dollars to “protect people who are drowning … [and] don’t have deep pockets.”

Asked about Barton’s comments, Holder said he was “not aware” of them, but he called the administration’s efforts so far “entirely appropriate.”

Holder said Associate Attorney General Tom Perrelli is “very intimately involved in working out the deal with BP,” calling Perrelli one of the administration’s “main negotiators” over the $20 billion escrow account.