David Rothkopf

Opinion contributor

In the overheated atmosphere in today's Washington, it is easy for a single story to spin into dozens of subplots overnight, each with its own twists and turns, most of which would be unimaginable in the America of just a few years ago. Nothing illustrates this like the Ukraine case.

It is a complicated scandal with many subscandals orbiting it, and it is just one of many scandals boiling over in the nation’s capital. Yet we must not allow ourselves to be distracted from one core truth: The Ukraine scandal is not separate from the Russia scandal with which this administration began and that, indeed, may have helped Trump win the office he now holds. Nor should we ignore that at the heart of both these interconnected series of events is an approach to power and self-interests that has infused and corrupted every aspect of this presidency.

Narrow Ukraine inquiry is mistake

Noting these connections is not just important because they are real. There is a temptation among some Democrats in Congress to narrow the focus of the impeachment inquiry to the Ukraine case because it seems so “open and shut.”

Evidence already provided shows President Donald Trump asked Ukraine to dig up dirt on potential 2020 rival Joe Biden and his son Hunter and to investigate a conspiracy theory that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that interfered in the 2016 U.S. election — and he and his team seemed to make that a precondition for congressionally approved military aid and a White House meeting.

But narrowing the inquiry to just this case is a mistake on many levels:

►Nothing is open and shut if the members of the majority party in the Senate are willing to discount the facts or make up their own narratives — as they have shown they are.

►The case is stronger if it is shown to be part of a pattern of behavior of Trump seeking the aid of foreign powers to win elections, using the power of the presidency to promise benefits to those potential partners, and placing U.S. national interest second to his personal ambition.

►As we are seeing, the two cases are actually one case.

Opening door to lifting sanctions

Consider what we have learned from the texts and the summary memorandum of the president’s call with his Ukrainian counterpart. In the text messages released by former U.S. envoy Kurt Volker, it is made clear that a precondition of a White House visit was taking steps to help disprove the U.S. intelligence community finding that Russia intervened in the 2016 election. There was pressure from Trump to investigate a disproven conspiracy theory that the 2016 election hacks originated in Ukraine.

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And Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during the United Nations meeting last month to cut a deal with Russia to end conflict in parts of Ukraine. Zelensky ultimately agreed to withdraw his troops from these areas if Russia-friendly rebels reciprocate, and to hold elections under certain conditions. These actions could open the door to normalized U.S.-Russia relations and lifting sanctions on the Russians related to their 2014 invasion of Ukraine.

Removing those sanctions has long been a top Russian goal, one that Trump seemed eager to explore immediately after assuming office, thanks in part to Russian help. Further, in 2016, Team Trump altered the platform at the GOP convention to remove a reference to “providing lethal defensive weapons” to the Ukrainian military in its defense against Russian incursions. That effort was led by a lobbyist for Russian sympathizers in Ukraine, Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, who is now in prison for fraud and other charges stemming from the Mueller investigation into Russian election interference.

Putin is the one clear winner

As a result, the Ukraine case is not just the same kind of collusion with a foreign power to seek to win an election; it was an extension of the Russia 2016 case seeking the same goals for Russia, the same goals for Trump and featuring many of the same players. What is more, despite the scandal and its implications for Trump, the one clear winner from all this so far is the mastermind of the 2016 effort, Russian President Vladimir Putin.

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A Ukrainian withdrawal from contested regions of the country, and the possibility of further concessions to come, are not all Putin has gotten. The Ukraine case has thrown a monkey wrench into the U.S.-Ukraine relationship and led to revelations that will sour U.S. relations with NATO allies. Now, with Trump's abandonment of America's Kurdish allies in the fight against the Islamic State, he is trying to give Putin what he wants in Syria, too. The United States is continuing to reel from the aftershocks of the chaos bomb Putin dropped in 2016 when he helped elect Trump.

In foreign policy and national security terms, America is weakened and Russia, relatively speaking, is strengthened. As a consequence, impeachment and legal issues in America aside, history will certainly view both what happened in 2016 and what has happened this year as part of one single story — that of a canny, unscrupulous Russian leader taking advantage of the unbridled ambition of an American leader with little regard for the law or the best interests of his country.

David Rothkopf is CEO of the Rothkopf Group and host of Deep State Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @djrothkopf