Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said President Trump's 2016 campaign was "essentially aiding and abetting the Russians."

Clapper made the comment during an interview Thursday on CNN, where he works as a contributor.

Anchor Brianna Keilar asked about Sen. John Cornyn's question to Attorney General William Barr about why the Obama administration did not do more to stop Russian interference in the election.

Clapper said he was an "advocate for doing more earlier and more aggressive, but to say that the Obama administration did nothing is not true."

[Related: Trump: Obama did 'nothing' about Russian interference]

After comparing how Obama and his administration warned Russia to back off to Trump's reluctance to be as stern, Clapper said, "You might ask what was the Trump campaign doing at the same time, essentially aiding and abetting the Russians and having dozens of contacts with Russians, some of whom were connected officially to Russian intelligence."

Keilar pressed him to clarify. "To be clear, not meeting the legal definition of aiding and abetting," she said.

"Well, I'm using that in a parochial or colloquial sense I guess," Clapper said. He specifically referred to July 27, 2016, the day Trump publicly encouraged Russia to find his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton's missing emails.

According to indictments by special counsel Robert Mueller, the Russians launched a new hack attack in an effort to track Clinton's emails. Mueller, who looked into suspicious contacts between members of Trump's camp and the Russians, did not establish that there was criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.

Clapper was director of national intelligence from 2010 to January 2017.