James Clapper doubles down on Russians swinging election to Trump -- and hints that both used same playbook

On Friday, CNN's Erin Burnett suggested that there will never be enough evidence to support "spygate," and asked when President Donald Trump would stop making up a rabbit hole of lies.

"Will there ever be evidence that makes the president stop making these claims?" she asked former director of national intelligence, James Clapper.

"I think this narrative is going to continue regardless of the facts. That's just -- that's the way things are now," Clapper said. "I think the president will continue to perpetuate that narrative no matter how much evidence is brought out that's factual."

Clapper recently released his new book "Facts and Fear."

Burnett read an excerpt from his book that said: "Of course, the Russian efforts affected the outcome, surprising even themselves. They swung the election to a Trump win. To conclude otherwise stretches common sense to the breaking point. Less than 80,000 votes in three key states swung the election. I have no doubt that more votes than that were influenced by this massive effort by the Russians."

"Is this your belief or do you have hard evidence?" Burnett asked.

Clapper then made his point clear by breaking down the Russian involvement into the presidential election.

"To make this as clear as I possibly can, when we rendered our official intelligence community assessment on the sixth of January 2017, which we briefed to then president-elect Trump, we made the point that the intelligence community did not make any attempt to assess the impact on voter decisions or the outcome of the election," Clapper said.

Clapper continued: "It defies logic and credulity to suggest they didn't have a huge impact and turn the election towards Donald Trump. Also, I describe in the book the striking parallelism in what the Trump campaign was doing and saying and what the Russians were doing and saying. It was almost like an echo chamber. Particularly with respect to their attacks on Hillary Clinton."