There was never any doubt, or at least there shouldn’t have been.

PolitiFact, the Pulitzer Prize-winning news service that specializes in looking behind statements by political leaders and getting to the truth, has announced that its “Lie of the Year” is President Trump’s repeated claim that Russian meddling in the 2016 election is a “made-up” story.

“When the nation’s commander-in-chief refuses to acknowledge a threat to U.S. democracy, it makes it all the more difficult to address the problem,” the website’s editor, Angie Drobnic Holan, wrote in a post last week. “For this reason, we name Trump’s claim that the Russia interference is a hoax as our Lie of the Year for 2017.”

PolitiFact readers also chose Trump’s lie as the year’s top whopper “by an overwhelming margin,” Holan added.

Over the years, PolitiFact has reviewed nearly 500 Trump statements; 69 percent of those were judged “Mostly False,” “False” or “Pants On Fire,” the website’s worst rating.

This is Trump’s second “victory” in the Lie of the Year competition. His statements also won the award in 2015.

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