From the Internet to Trump's Twitter feed, how a phony conspiracy theory caught fire

When Michael Flynn, President Trump’s short-lived national security advisor, resigned last month, Mark Levin was outraged. Not because Flynn had falsely denied speaking with the Russian ambassador about US sanctions before Trump took office. Rather, the conservative talk radio host was furious that US surveillance had picked up Flynn’s venture into freelance diplomacy.

“How many phone calls of Donald Trump, if any, have been intercepted by the administration and recorded by the Obama administration?” Levin demanded on his program, which reaches millions nationwide. “This, ladies and gentlemen, is the real scandal.” With that, what began as rumors and unverified accounts percolating through right-wing media coalesced into a wild conspiracy theory adopted by a president with an itchy Twitter finger, a penchant for intrigue and eagerness to embrace information — however sketchy — that reinforces, rather than tests, his beliefs. Trump’s unfounded claim that President Obama had wiretapped his telephone ricocheted throughout the country, shook Washington and stunned disbelieving US allies. The fallout continues to rattle the embryonic Trump White House.

The president’s own Justice Department, the head of the FBI and the bipartisan leaders of two congressional oversight committees have all said they’ve found no evidence to substantiate the outlandish assertion. But the president and his chief spokesman, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, have refused to back down, aligning themselves with Levin and others operating in what amounts to a hall of mirrors, where the unproven claims of one media outlet are cited as evidence by another and facts are twisted, misdirected or ignored in the service of political propaganda.