AP FACT CHECK: Trump, GOP distortion on Flynn; virus fiction

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump and his GOP allies are misrepresenting the facts behind the legal case of former national security adviser Michael Flynn as they seek to allege improper behavior during the Obama administration in the presidential campaign season.

Broadly dubbing his allegations “Obamagate," Trump points to unspecified conspiracies against himself in 2016 and suggests the disclosure of Flynn's name as part of legal U.S. surveillance of foreign targets was criminal and motivated by partisan politics. There's no evidence of that.

In fact, the so-called unmasking of Americans' names like Flynn's is legal, and such requests have been more frequently sought in the Trump administration than in the last stretch of Obama's tenure.

In a politically tumultuous week, the president also mischaracterized messages between FBI employees and again alleged without evidence corruption involving Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden's son, Hunter, in China.

Meanwhile, Trump continued to spread falsehoods about the availability of tests needed to help stem the spread of the coronavirus in the U.S.

A look at the past week's political rhetoric and reality:

FLYNN

TRUMP: “OBAMAGATE!” — tweet Wednesday.

TRUMP: “Biggest political crime and scandal in the history of the USA.” — tweet Thursday.

THE FACTS: He’s making an unsupported claim that former President Barack Obama broke the law.

Trump and his supporters have made the unmasking of Flynn one of their major talking points, claiming that it proves the Obama administration unfairly and illegally targeted Flynn and other Trump associates.

But there is nothing illegal about unmasking. The declassified document also states that the unmasking requests were approved through the National Security...