WALLACE: The DNI, Dan Coates has weighed in with a statement this afternoon that says this: "I'm confident the Attorney General will work with the intelligence community in accordance with the long established standards to protect highly sensitive classified information that, if publicly released would put our national security at risk." In your story is a line about how what Barr is seeking is more information about what foreign assets the CIA had in Russia in 2016 and what those informants were telling the agency about how President Vladimir Putin of Russia sought to meddle in the 2016 election. What does Barr need more access to information about what foreign assets the CIA had in Russia in 2016 than what is available through the interagency process? What is he not able to get his hands on that is part of that sort of sweep of intel?

SCHMIDT: Well, we think that what he may want to sort of get is sort of an understanding of how the intelligence community's assessment went from Russia's meddling in the election to a counterintelligence investigation on the president. Look, there are some very legitimate issues here that the inspector general is looking at. This was a very unusual situation that the FBI confronted. They were investigating a campaign, it was very delicate. There was a dossier of information that they had from one of their sources that had been paid for by the opponent of trump. And those are thorny issues that deserve a full look at by the inspector general. So the question here is would Barr's efforts like sort of overshadow that or undermine that or take away from that where there probably are some really important lessons to be learned about how investigations of this nature, big counterintelligence investigations, essentially counterintelligence sort of attack on the united states involving a campaign.

BASH: I'm sorry, Nicolle...

WALLACE: Go ahead.

BASH: Actually, I disagree a little bit. There's NO legitimate reason for the attorney general to have human sources in Russia. I can't think of a single one. The only one I can think of is he wants to somehow trot them out publicly, malign them and undermine them and then say the whole basis for the investigation was flawed. That's the only reason he would do it. To do what Michael says, which is to review whether or not the FBI had sufficient predicate to look at a presidential campaign, he doesn't need Russian human sources. Absolutely not. There's no need for that.