It started with a tweet from President Donald Trump in early March 2017.
“Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory,” he wrote. “Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!”
It was a wild claim — and one that was soon debunked. The primary rationale for Trump’s tweet, it seems, was a story published by Breitbart News that attempted to summarize a broadcast by right-wing radio host Mark Levin. As a way of conveying the credibility that assertion deserves, the Breitbart story included two references to claims about surveillance warrants made by columnist Louise Mensch, whose claims about various things have repeatedly been shown to be meritless. Trump’s allies quickly tried to backstop his tweet by elevating activity that, if you squinted and plugged your ears, could seem like maybe it constituted wiretapping.
