Harris Poll Chairman: Russia Ads Had Little Effect on Election

Mark Penn, the chairman of the Harris Poll and former chief strategist for Bill and Hillary Clinton's campaigns, said that Russia buying ads did little to influence the 2016 presidential election.

"We have got to be careful about fake news," Penn said Tuesday on "Fox & Friends."

Penn noted the time frame of a majority of the ads. "Fifty-six percent were after the election. Maybe somebody should have told them when the election was," Penn said.

"Maybe half" of the ads were targeted to the swing states, and most did not mention candidates, Harris said.

"We can’t over-exaggerate the effect here," Penn said, noting the number of supporters of President Barack Obama who voted for President Donald Trump in the election.

"It’s clear this was no devilishly effective plot," Penn wrote in a Sunday opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal discussing the Russian ads.

A concern of Penn’s is that exaggerating the impact of Russian ads may lead to Washington "needlessly and recklessly" regulating the internet, he wrote in the Journal.

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