Absolutely they were trying to create a crime. They already had the actual transcripts of the phone call, and couldn’t make a case on that, so it was a textbook setup to get Flynn to make a mistake during the interview.
But Flynn was able to talk around their traps during the interview. The FBI (Strozk as a matter of fact) struck out trying to get Flynn to trip up during the interview.
So they went back to the FBI, where McCabe re-wrote the 302 of the interview. But even then, they didn’t think it was enough.
It was actually only several months later, if not a year, that Mueller and his band of criminal prosecutors, came along, looked at the doctored 302, and declared a crime had been committed.
It was 5 months later.