Hello again, I'm Orin Alney. Did Russian cyber warriors really play a role in Donald Trump's presidential election?

American intelligence agencies say there's no question they tried, but the president himself denounces the very idea.

Even since 13 Russians have been indicted, he still calls Special Counsel Robert Mueller's

investigation a hoax and a ridiculous effort to follow a made-up story.

He calls that a witch hunt.

Kathleen Hall Jamison says, not so fast.

She has been studying elections since 1996.

She heads the Annanburg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. She co-founded

factcheck.org. Veteran Republicans, as well as Democrats, regard her as rigorously non-partisan.

Now she's written a scholarly book full of tables and data called Cyber War, how Russian hackers

and trolls helped elect a president.

I asked her to make the case. Does it mean the president's campaign colluded despite his

denials? What does it mean for the future? For the mainstream media? And for the

understanding of American voters? Here's our conversation.

Kathleen Hall-Jamison, as always, it is a privilege to have you on our podcast.

As always, it's a pleasure to be here.

Did you set out to determine that the Russians really made a difference in the campaign?

No, I did not.

I was busy living my life trying to make

sense of our findings about the presidential debates when a former student of mine, who's on the

op-ed page of the Washington Post, called and said that she thought I might know the answer to the

question had the Russian social media activities potentially affected the outcome of the election. And she did it in the context to the question had the Russian social media activities potentially affected

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