Obama weaponized the national security establishment to put potential political opponents under surveillance.
This is Watergate on steroids.
Obama weaponized it because it because he wanted to destroy it. It was a win-win for the left- abuse the hell out of the power and reap the rewards of doing so. If never caught and reelected, keep abusing the power and keep purging opponents and replacing them with shills until it is fully under control. If caught, use the scandal to spark outrage against the intel community so that power cannot be turned against Obama’s ilk, denied to
his opponents via a Church committee-style gutting, giving congress more power over the executive branch until such a time as the left regains the presidency and with luck, both houses of congress.
Note Obama didn’t give the intel community departments permission to share info when he took office... he did not trust them. So he kept a tight rein on the intel community so that anticommunist elements within it could not act against him during his administration. When he realized Hillary would not be there then and only then could he take a calculated risk of allowing info sharing, hoping he and the black hats could make more use of it in the remaining transition time than the white hats could because the white hats would not be prepared to do so and would not yet have a leader to direct them.