President Obama flouted executive authority and too often politicized the law. These attitudes spilled into the transition of power, it seems, as federal agents targeted Michael Flynn, the incoming National Security Advisor of the Trump Administration. Obama and Flynn had a complicated past, and Flynn paid a heavy price.

Retired Gen. Flynn, a Democrat, served Obama for two years as Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. After being fired, Flynn went public with disagreements the two had over how to handle ISIS. This was unusual. More than most presidents, Obama enjoyed a tight-lipped inner-circle. Even departed confidantes rarely spoke ill of the Administration.

In a December 2016 meeting with Trump, Obama warned him about hiring Flynn. At the same time, the Federal Bureau of Investigation was conducting a counter-intelligence operation on Flynn and others in Trump’s orbit. Intelligence operatives were tracking the activities of Sergey Kislyak, Russian Ambassador to the United States. Kislyak met with Flynn, but Flynn’s identity was “masked” since he was not suspected of criminal activity. Obama officials requested the “unmasking” of the individual, which turned out to be Flynn. Eventually, Flynn was targeted specifically by the F.B.I. and, it seems, made some false statements based on a poor recollection of events. These were used to pressure him into pleading guilty of lying to special agents. The Department of Justice is now attempting to undo the plea arrangement.

President Trump has turned this into #Obamagate, speculating that President Obama broke the law. The acting Director of National Intelligence, Richard Grenell, secured a list of those who ordered the initial unmasking and declassified it. Republican Senators Grassley and Johnson released the document.

This story is unfolding, and it is too early to draw hard conclusions. Elements of Congress will investigate further, but some things seem worth highlighting.

It is getting harder and harder to give the F.B.I. the benefit of the doubt at the elite level, at least as it relates to the initial investigation into President Trump. Some bad actors determined to investigate President Trump and did so at times on a flimsy pre-text. I will always stand by the fact that President Trump’s own actions suggested improprieties. His hiring of people like Manafort, who was connected to long tentacles of Russian influence, his rhetoric on N.A.T.O., and his coddling of autocrats like Putin, Xi, and Kim, would be enough to persuade some people to dig into Trump’s campaign and its relationships. At some point we will figure out the sequence of events, but it is possible that those initial inquiries did not yield ripe enough fruit, so they began to hunt for reasons to continue.

This was an abuse of power, at least on its face. I agree with Kyle Smith. We shouldn’t shrug it off. This sort of behavior needs to be condemned, roundly, on all sides of the political spectrum. Unfortunately, along with everything else, it will collapse into the typical framework that dominates our political conversations.

Gen. Flynn was mistreated as part of the investigation, but we should resist any narrative that portrays him as holy and blameless. He was fired by Trump for lying to Vice President Pence about his communications with Kislyak. Flynn was also lobbying on behalf of Turkish interests while connected with the Trump campaign. He published an opinion piece in line with his client’s wishes on the day of the presidential election in 2016. Flynn would have been a problem for President Trump even without the Mueller investigation, but that does not excuse what he has been through the past several years.

Unmasking as a practice is not controversial. In order for intelligence to be evaluated in context, unmasking must occur frequently. Through the process, the F.B.I. can determine if an American citizen might be engaging in espionage. For President Obama, or those around him, to order the unmasking is standard operating procedure in many cases. Focusing on the unmasking is a misdirection.

Still, this is not a normal case, obviously, since an incoming president, and his team, were being investigated. As Andrew McCarthy, a former U.S. Attorney, and someone generally supportive of President Trump, says, this was a counter-intelligence probe. The F.B.I. does this routinely and it is perfectly normal for President Obama, or Vice President Biden, to be aware of this sort of investigation. As McCarthy says pointedly,

In fact, if the FBI truly believed a candidate for the presidency was in an espionage conspiracy with the Kremlin, there would be something profoundly wrong if the president were not kept informed.

The bigger question is not “what did President Obama know and when did he know it,” but why did the investigation take place? Was it based on evidence that demanded an investigation or pure animus? I am not ready to answer that question yet, though that probably puts me way behind President Trump’s supporters.