I think it's possible that Obama truly did make an effort to put a wall between himself and any criminal investigation into ties between Trump campaign and Russia and focus only the National Security side of things. There's obviously a bit of overlap, which makes things tricky and all the more reason to make the record very clear the motivations for his actions.
The now public Rice email seems to be doing just that.
You're right about the Warrant thing. The FISA system is a mess and the FBI basically just exploited it. I don't want to have another Russia collusion debate on what we learned years later, but I agree with you that in Jan 2017 the FBI did not have solid evidence that a crime was committed. There was smoke though. And the FISA warrants had nothing to do with spying on Russians. We have to spy on Russia.
I'm not sure if you believe it or not, but let's assume for sake of argument that the FBI had intercepted a call between Flynn and Russian Ambassador where Flynn told the Ambassador not to worry about the sanctions.
Is that a crime? I honestly don't know. I do think it's a big deal though. A retired 3 star general who had served as director of the DIA (basically the CIA for just the military) under Obama for 2 years, undermining the administration by telling our enemy not to worry about the sanctions his president had just applied.
If all that really happened, what's the right thing to do?
And what do you do when you see Flynn lie about it to Pence and Spicer, who turned around and told the Nation?
In hindsight, they probably just should've let Flynn get away with it. But at the time they didn't know what else Flynn, the National Security Advisor to the President, was lying about.
Get away with what? Not committing a crime? I like how you phrase this as if Obama was looking out for national security instead of violating it by using its intelligence networks in a criminal plot to overthrow a duly elected president. All the Rice email shows is she knew she was being set up as a patsy and wasn't having it. Of course you don't want to have a debate over "Russian collusion", because you were dead fucking wrong, it never happened, and you have no evidence to support that assertion, so lets never mind that right?
"Smoke" (whatever the fuck that means) is not a valid metric for a FISA warrant.
"FISA application requires the court find probable cause that the target of the surveillance be a "foreign power" or an "agent of a foreign power"[22] inside the United States[21] and that the places at which surveillance is requested is used or will be used by that foreign power or its agent.[22] In addition, the court must find that the proposed surveillance meet certain "minimization requirements" for information pertaining to U.S. persons.[23][21] If the foreign power’s suspected agent communicates with Americans, the communications of citizens of the United States are incidentally intercepted even though they are not the targets of the surveillance.[21]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Act#Warrantless_domestic_wiretapping_programThe basis for the Flynn warrant was the investigation into the manufactured accusations of illegal Turkish lobbying ties (not anything to do with Russia).
https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1120621/downloadIt has already been demonstrated that Flynn dutifully reported his ties to these people, and lying about it would be pointless because it was already a matter of record, and he knew this. This the entire warrant "probable cause" was nothing more than an illegal manufactured parallel construction in order to violate protections for wiretapping laws of US citizens. Lying to obtain FISA warrants is a crime. Illegally spying is a crime. Attempting to unseat a duly elected president is treason. "Is that a crime?" you ask? Yes, one punishable by death.