"Their purpose was to sow discontent and mistrust in our elections. They wanted us to be at each others' throat when it was over," former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers said at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. | AP Photo Ex-House intel chair: Russian meddling into 2016 election was 'wildly successful'

Russia’s efforts to interfere with last year’s U.S. presidential election were “wildly successful,” former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers said Tuesday, and are still bearing fruit today in the form of continued infighting at the highest levels in Washington.

"Their purpose was to sow discontent and mistrust in our elections. They wanted us to be at each others' throat when it was over," Rogers said, according to Reuters, at a panel discussion hosted by Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. "It's influencing, I would say, legislative process today. That's wildly successful."


Rogers appeared at the panel with former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who is scheduled to testify before Congress next week on Russian meddling into last year’s election.

Most prominently, the Kremlin’s efforts at influencing the presidential race took the form of cyberattacks launched against the Democratic National Committee and other prominent Democrats, leaking embarrassing email conversations through third-party websites like WikiLeaks and others. As early as October, the intelligence community identified the Russian government as the culprit behind the attacks.

But despite the intelligence community’s unanimous assessment, President Donald Trump for weeks disputed that the Russian government, with which he had promised warmer relations, had been behind the wave of cyberattacks. He took even greater issue with the intelligence community’s conclusion that the Kremlin had taken its action not just to create confusion but with the specific aim of aiding Trump’s candidacy and harming that of Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Trump eventually conceded that Moscow was to blame, but not before calling into question the credibility and professionalism of the intelligence community, and comparing it to Nazi Germany because of leaks about Russia’s involvement in the election that the president believed were targeting him as he prepared to take office.

Clinton on Tuesday reiterated that she believes Russian meddling was a major factor in her losing the 2016 election, telling CNN’s Christiane Amanpour that "I was on the way to winning until a combination of Jim Comey’s letter on Oct. 28and Russian WikiLeaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me but got scared off. And the evidence for the intervening event is, I think, compelling, persuasive.”

With crucial campaigns underway in France and upcoming in Germany, Clapper said that Russia’s success in the U.S. presidential election is likely to embolden the Kremlin and inspire more efforts at interfering in western democracies.

"This is the most assertive, most aggressive and most directly impactful of any engagement that they have had in our elections," Clapper said. "They have to regard what they did as a huge success. They've been doing it in France, and they'll do it in Germany."

