Obama-ites assumed Hillary would be elected, and that the paper-trail of their domestic spying would remain deeply buried, out of reach of anyone trying to find the truth.
But oops, the election didn't go according to plan ... in an absolute panic, Rice, Jarrett, Rhodes et al were forced to come up with a plan to reverse-justify their snooping on American citizens. They knew their spying was likely to be discovered by the incoming Trump admin.
And indeed Rice's paper trail WAS found, but only after the fraudulent Russia story had already been hyped to high heaven by a cooperative MSM.
So the Obama-ites' panicky plan has been to try to (1) establish a pretext for the spying and (2) drown out the real story. I don't think either (1) or (2) can last.
They expected Hillary to win, Susan Rice expected to be Secretary of State, and they expected to destroy Trump and all of his allies with the “in league with Russia” meme. It was going to be “Homeland” for real.