What happened in the 2016 election that turned the situation in the worst political scandal in the history of the United States ever, will always be regarded from different angles, but remains a disgrace that will be remembered in history as an attack on democracy in a country where such an attack should never go unpunished.
For some reason or another Obama decided to use the FBI and the Justice Department to undermine the opposing Republican Party in the election and subsequently and that is not what is expected to ever happen in a democracy where such actions are more linked to police state scenario than to any form of democracy, Perhaps he thought that what happened will never be exposed if Clifton became President, but unfortunately it did not happen and went far deeper than what was ever expected from a President.
Ostensibly the problem started years before the election, Obama had the strong support of most of the media and could count on them to cover up anything negative happening in his administration, but there was a problem and that was that since Reagan the ownership of large components if the media ownership changed and the social media was established practice was that the Government start to use the media to cover up wrongdoing by Government. That was done in important cases where weapons of mass destruction - which never existed - to start a war in Iraq with ghastly consequences still effecting the world today,
However, a partial media was not the total solution and something more was needed and that entails the usage of the policing and the judicial system to undermine and discredit the Republican Party, It started muck earlier and already in 2012 there were incidents like the usage of her private server by Clinton for official purposes, That had potentially damaging consequences like hacking the service and exposing things that should never become public knowledge in the first place, The fact is an investigation became necessary, because nasty information became available on a wide range of issues and not was politically necessary to cover it up, The only way possible to do that was to ensure that the FBI and the Justice Department was not properly used to do any real investigation and to cover it up. However, that did not prevent thousands of e-mails from emerging and painting a very negative image of what happened under the Obama Administration. The first thing was to ensure that the discovered e-mails would not be used for investigations pf potential crimes having being committed, but did not stop the circulation of the e-mails.
Being as it may the start of the 2016 election campaign had severe problems for the Democratic Party, The problems mainly centered around dissatisfaction with Government and a general feeling on the working class sector - making up about 70% of the voters - that their interests were neglected by the Washington hierarchy under both Democratic and Republican presidencies and factually their standard of living went down rather drastically, Their real income since 1988 declined by circa 10% and the majority of voters felt that Washington has no interest in what they encounter in their daily lives, Major capitalists started closing down their industries in the USA and jobs were lost especially in States that became known as the Rust Belt States where workers in the past voted solidly for the Democratic Party,
The news media did their part, The "opinion polls" they published always showed a huge victory by Clinton, but internally with the Intelligence service and in the White House they ere worried by the fact that too many people were dissatisfied by the prevailing conditions and a voter rebellion could be in the offing, Drastic measures were needed and that was where the Presidency became involved in the process, The question was how to counter voter dissatisfaction with a Government far removed from the actual voters, The next step was easy - produce "evidence: that there were conniving between the Trump campaign and the Russians, but the problem was not easy - so the DNC and Clinton hired an ex-spy and the Steele Dossier was compiled to discredit Trump and allege that he was Putin's agent in the USA< There was zero evidence that it ever happened. However the media could be used to spread the "story" 0 but some assistance from the intelligence services was needed to make the allegations against Trump stick.
In the process the FBI became the real organization needed to deal with the issue, The first instance was to "spy" on the Trump campaign to substantiate what was in the Steele Dossier. In the end the FBI wanted to give a cover-up to legitimize their action by using the FISA Act to legitimize their actions. They had to get permission from the FISC - they submitted to that Court fraudulent applications to spy on the opposing campaign. There was initially 1 application that became generally known and that was the one on Carter Page - an agent who did work for the CIA an as a consequence met with people and report the discussions to the CIA, He also met some Russians and promptly reported the issues discussed to the CIA. Page was involved in the Trump campaign and the FBI in their application falsified the information provided to the FISC and used the Steele Dossier to justify their application. When investigated by the Inspector General of Judicial Services years later he found 17 "mistakes" in the Page application and found 29 other applications where there was the same methods used, Effectively the situation was that instead of the FISA being used to protect the interests if the USA by secret investigation of foreigners it became a mechanism to spy on American people based on their political beliefs,
However, the elements in the management of the FBI and Justice Department involved in the FISC court applications and it became a free for all case and used totally illegitimate means to spy on others where FISC applications were not involved, like in the Flynn case. They has no reason to investigate Flynn and even their own reports indicate that they found nothing to pursue further investigations, but Obama had a real problem with Flynn insofar as his actions were concerned when he was the Director of National Intelligence under Obama. He differed from him on two issues, Flynn warned him that the real threat posed by Muslim fanatics persisted despite of the killing of Osama Bin Laden and will be a bigger threat to the USA than ever before and that China became the major threat to the USA, while the potential threat from Russia declined. Obama consequently fired Flynn, but when it became clear that Flynn was going to become part of the Trump Administration Obama ordered that something should be done to incriminate Flynn and a meeting in the White House on 4 January 2017 set in motion a series of actions to be followed after the inauguration of Trump as President, An interview with Flynn followed as a first step and the way it was handled was totally irregular and obviously unlawful, That resulted in criminal charges against Flynn that was false to start off with. When Attorney General Barr decided to have a lawyer investigating the whole saga - it became known that the whole saga stemmed from the January meeting mentioned and that it was a plot involving Obama, Biden and all the seniors in the FBI and the CIA as well as an Assistant Secretary General in the Justice Department. The attack on Flynn continued unabated for years afterwards in a Court Case against Flynn and in the end Barr dropped the charges like a hot potato because of the issue of Obama politics being involved and there were clear evidence that the report on an interview 2 FBI agents had with Flynn was illegally falsified to implicate him in criminal activities.
The Russian Collusion issue ended up being investigated by the House and Senate Intelligence Committees and found no evidence that any of the many officials and politicians under oath declared that they have no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians. This was confirmed when the statements made by people involved were released. However, the campaign was not ended in the two investigations mentioned. The same people whom under oath had no evidence of collusion, turned around and told the media they had evidence of collusion. The question is - were they lying under oath or were they lying to the media.
Being as it may the same elements involved in the previous illegal activities were involved in the setting up of the appointment of the Mueller Special Council. What it ended up in was to confirm the fact that Trump conspired with the Russians to win the election. Mueller was given a free hand to conduct the interviews and was given 1,2 million documents, conducted over 500 search warrants investigations and 2 500 witnesses and found nothing. The whoee exercise cost more than $32 million, Even though they submitted a lengthy report they could find no evidence - so they had to claim something else. They claimed that Trump somehow obstructed Justice, but when questioned in the House Mueller and his team could not provide a single example of where it happened.
At present there are still investigations in progress on the issue and indications are that many senior former officials will be charged with crimes resulting from the investigations. The end is not in sight yet and the implications are not looking good for Obama and his administration. It will no doubt cause damage to his administration and action would have to be taken to prevent even worse scandals in future,
.