Why would Flynn lie to the FBI about this if it was innocuous? Certainly, he knows the consequences. You would like us to assume a 4-star General lied to the FBI about communicating with a high-ranking Russian official, because reasons. The rest of us are combining this with information on Kushner trying to set up a Russian back-channel, Sessions lying about contacts with Kislyak, Manafort offering Deripaska campaign briefings, Trump literally asking the Russians to hack for him, Don Jr. meeting in Trump Tower, etc.
People are speculating because the Mueller investigation is not leaking any information. The flip side is people acting like he has "nothing", meanwhile surprise indictments are flying and people are cutting deals.
==And now we have indictments for Russians doing the things we already knew they were doing==
So, yesterday this "assumption" was valid, but any other assumptions based on the information we have are just wishful thinking. Logical pretzel.
In short: people who are fantasizing about their political enemies going to jail should expect to be disappointed, and as I said, I expect this chapter in American history orbiting paranoia about Russian bots posting spam on Facebook to generally be lost and forgotten within an election cycle.
What we have had instead are indictments against campaign members for either process crimes (like lying to the FBI) or crimes committed well before the Trump campaign even existed (Manafort's money laundering.) And now we have indictments for Russians doing the things we already knew they were doing -- trying to cause chaos in the election. You can speculate all day long about the implications of plea deals and what they mean but it's all speculative and in general, if it's assuming some more nefarious scheme that suits a particular political agenda, in my view wishful thinking.
It's a nice rhetorical trick by the media to say "former Trump campaign members have been indicted" to try to instill the narrative that actual crimes were committed by the Trump campaign towards influencing the election through coordination with Russians, but this rhetorical trick is in the same category as the "hacking the election" one cited by the OP -- deliberate framing to re-enforce a narrative that up to this point is still unproven.