法官在曼哈顿刑事审判中对特朗普实施禁言令
【中美创新时报2024年3月26日讯】（记者温友平编译）主持唐纳德·J·特朗普(Donald J. Trump)刑事审判的纽约法官周二下达了一项禁言令，禁止他攻击证人、检察官和陪审员，这是遏制这位前总统对其法律对手的愤怒言论的最新举措。《纽约时报》记者本·普罗特斯（Ben Protess）和威廉·K·拉什鲍姆（William K. Rashbaum）对此作了下述报道。
法官胡安·M·默昌 (Juan M. Merchan) 应曼哈顿地区检察官办公室的要求下达了该命令，该办公室对特朗普提起了诉讼。地区检察官阿尔文·布拉格 (Alvin L. Bragg) 指控特朗普在 2016 年竞选期间和竞选结束后掩盖了潜在的性丑闻。
该裁决是在默昌法官将审判日期定为 4 月 15 日之后做出的，驳回了特朗普推迟诉讼程序的最新努力。这将标志着对美国前总统的首次刑事起诉。
特朗普最近第三次获得共和党总统提名，由于针对他的另外三起刑事案件陷入拖延，曼哈顿案可能是选民在 11 月投票前唯一接受审判的案件。
根据法官的禁言令，特朗普不能就证人在本案中的角色做出或指示其他人做出陈述。如果特朗普打算干涉检察官、法院工作人员及其亲属的案件工作，他也被禁止对他们发表评论。法官裁定，任何有关陪审员的评论也被禁止。
这项精心设计的禁言令与华盛顿联邦上诉法院在特朗普的另一起刑事案件中维持原判的命令条款密切相关。上个月在寻求禁言令时，布拉格的检察官强调了特朗普“长期以来攻击证人、调查人员、检察官、法官和其他参与针对他的法律诉讼的人的历史”——法官在裁决中抓住了这一评论。
默昌法官在周二的命令中写道：“他的言论具有威胁性、煽动性和诽谤性。”
例如，特朗普先生将矛头指向他曾经的中间人、布拉格先生的主要证人之一迈克尔·D·科恩(Michael D. Cohen)，称他为“骗子”和“老鼠”。周二，特朗普在其社交媒体网站上发表了一篇漫无目的、愤怒的帖子，对科恩做出了不祥的提及，他在没有任何解释的情况下声称，他的前调解人已经“死亡”。他还用贬义的措辞提到了布拉格先生的一位检察官。
现在这两条评论都可以说违反了禁言令。在另一篇帖子中，特朗普将矛头指向了默钦法官及其家人，声称法官“恨我”，尽管这些言论似乎并未超出法官目前设定的界限。
该命令以及默昌法官最近发布的保护该案潜在陪审员身份的命令，反映出围绕特朗普的审判时时出现的愤怒和混乱的气氛。
特朗普最近在纽约败诉了由州总检察长提起的民事欺诈案，之后，白色粉末的信封被寄给总检察长办公室和负责此案的法官。法官阿瑟·F·恩戈伦 (Arthur F. Engoron) 也是在家中遭受恶作剧炸弹威胁的受害者。
特朗普称恩戈隆大法官是“疯子”，他还在所有刑事案件中将矛头指向检察官，错误地指控他们与拜登总统勾结。他称黑人民主党人布拉格先生为“种族主义者”。
特朗普的律师反对曼哈顿案中的这一命令，认为“对特朗普总统的第一修正案演讲施加事先限制是违宪且非法的”。
默昌法官是最新一位对前总统实施禁言令的法官。
除了涉及指控特朗普密谋推翻 2020 年大选的华盛顿刑事案件中的命令外，特朗普在攻击恩戈伦法官的首席法律助理后，还被命令不得对民事欺诈案中的法院工作人员发表评论 。当这位前总统违反该命令时，恩戈伦法官对他处以 15,000 美元的罚款。
最终，法官做出了有利于司法部长的裁决，特朗普被判赔偿超过 4.5 亿美元。
在曼哈顿刑事案件中，特朗普面临最高四年的监禁。此案源于科恩在 2016 年竞选期间向一名色情明星支付的封口费，该明星希望出售她与特朗普先生的性接触故事。据检察官称，特朗普当选后，帮助伪造了与科恩报销相关的商业记录，进一步向选民掩盖了这一丑闻。
布拉格先生去年提起诉讼后，默昌法官最初没有通过禁言令，同时指示特朗普先生不要发表“可能煽动暴力或内乱”的言论。但自那以后，特朗普继续攻击证人和检察官，促使布拉格寻求更正式的命令。
法官最近发布的保护该案潜在陪审员的命令实际上禁止特朗普暴露他们的身份，强调有必要保护那些可能决定高度敏感案件的人。
法官还下令对除本案律师之外的所有人保密他们的地址，特朗普的法律团队并不反对这一措施。
在周二的另一项命令中，默昌法官还向特朗普的律师发出了严厉警告。他提醒他们要表现得专业，否则就有被蔑视的风险。
默昌法官写道：“本法院强调，它希望并充分期待律师的热心辩护以及证人和当事人的积极贡献。” “尽管如此，法院预计热心倡导和故意无视其命令之间的界限不会被跨越。”
杰西·麦金利（Jesse McKinley）和凯特·克里斯托贝克（Kate Christobek）贡献了报道。
题图：唐纳德·J·特朗普即将在曼哈顿进行刑事审判，定于 4 月 15 日开始，这将标志着对美国前总统的首次刑事起诉。图片版权：Jefferson Siegel for The New York Times
附原英文报道：
Judge Imposes Gag Order on Trump in Manhattan Criminal Trial
The order limiting the former president’s speech came the day after Justice Juan M. Merchan set an April 15 trial date for the hush-money case.
By Ben Protess and William K. Rashbaum
March 26, 2024
The New York judge presiding over one of Donald J. Trump’s criminal trials imposed a gag order on Tuesday that prohibits him from attacking witnesses, prosecutors and jurors, the latest effort to rein in the former president’s wrathful rhetoric about his legal opponents.
The judge, Juan M. Merchan, imposed the order at the request of the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which brought the case against Mr. Trump. The district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, has accused Mr. Trump of covering up a potential sex scandal during and after his 2016 campaign.
The ruling comes on the heels of Justice Merchan’s setting an April 15 trial date, rejecting Mr. Trump’s latest effort to delay the proceeding. It will mark the first criminal prosecution of a former American president.
Mr. Trump recently clinched the Republican presidential nomination for the third time, and with three other criminal cases against him mired in delay, the Manhattan case could be the only one to go to trial before voters head to the polls in November.
Under the judge’s gag order, Mr. Trump cannot make, or direct others to make, statements about witnesses’ roles in the case. Mr. Trump is also barred from commenting on prosecutors, court staff and their relatives — if he intended to interfere with their work on the case. Any comments whatsoever about jurors are banned as well, the judge ruled.
The narrowly tailored gag order hewed closely to the terms of an order that was upheld by a federal appeals court in Washington in another of Mr. Trump’s criminal cases. And in seeking the gag order last month, Mr. Bragg’s prosecutors highlighted Mr. Trump’s “longstanding history of attacking witnesses, investigators, prosecutors, judges, and others involved in legal proceedings against him” — comments that the judge seized on in his ruling.
“His statements were threatening, inflammatory, denigrating,” Justice Merchan wrote in the Tuesday order.
Mr. Trump, for example, has taken aim at Michael D. Cohen, his onetime fixer and one of Mr. Bragg’s main witnesses, calling him a “liar” and a “rat.” And in a rambling and angry post on his social media site on Tuesday, Mr. Trump made an ominous reference to Mr. Cohen, claiming without explanation that his former fixer was “death.” He also referred to one of Mr. Bragg’s prosecutors in pejorative terms.
Both comments would now arguably violate the gag order. In another post, Mr. Trump took aim at Justice Merchan and his family, claiming that the judge “hates me,” though those comments do not appear to cross the line the judge has now set.
The order, along with Justice Merchan’s recent order protecting the identities of potential jurors in the case, reflects the sometimes angry and chaotic atmosphere that has swirled around Mr. Trump’s trials.
After Mr. Trump recently lost his civil fraud case in New York, which was brought by the state attorney general, envelopes of white powder were sent to both the attorney general’s office and the judge who had overseen the case. The judge, Arthur F. Engoron, was also the victim of a hoax bomb threat at his home.
Mr. Trump, who called Justice Engoron a “nut job,” has also targeted the prosecutors in all his criminal cases, falsely accusing them of working in concert with President Biden. He called Mr. Bragg, a Democrat who is Black, a “racist.”
Mr. Trump’s lawyers had opposed the order in the Manhattan case, arguing that it “would be unconstitutional and unlawful to impose a prior restraint on President Trump’s First Amendment speech.”
Justice Merchan is just the latest judge to impose a gag order on the former president.
In addition to the order in the Washington criminal case, which involves accusations that Mr. Trump plotted to overturn the 2020 election, Mr. Trump was ordered not to comment on court staff members in the civil fraud case after he attacked Justice Engoron’s principal law clerk. Justice Engoron imposed $15,000 in fines on the former president when he ran afoul of that order.
Ultimately, the judge ruled in favor of the attorney general, inflicting a more than $450 million judgment on Mr. Trump.
In the Manhattan criminal case, Mr. Trump faces up to four years in prison. The case stems from a hush-money payment that Mr. Cohen made — to a porn star looking to sell her story of a sexual encounter with Mr. Trump — during the 2016 campaign. After he was elected, Mr. Trump helped falsify business records related to his reimbursement of Mr. Cohen, according to prosecutors, further covering up the scandal from voters.
After Mr. Bragg filed the case last year, Justice Merchan initially stopped short of adopting a gag order, while instructing Mr. Trump to refrain from making statements “likely to incite violence or civil unrest.” But since then, Mr. Trump has continued to attack witnesses and prosecutors, prompting Mr. Bragg to seek a more formal order.
The judge’s recent order protecting prospective jurors in the case effectively barred Mr. Trump from exposing their identities, emphasizing a need to protect those who might decide the highly sensitive case.
The judge also ordered that their addresses be kept secret from everyone except the lawyers in the case, a measure that Mr. Trump’s legal team did not oppose.
In a separate order Tuesday, Justice Merchan issued a stern warning to Mr. Trump’s lawyers as well. He reminded them to behave professionally, or risk being held in contempt.
“This Court emphasizes that it hopes for and fully expects zealous advocacy from counsel as well as spirited contribution from witnesses and parties alike,” Justice Merchan wrote. “Nonetheless, the Court expects that the line between zealous advocacy and willful disregard of its orders will not be crossed.”
Jesse McKinley and Kate Christobek contributed reporting.
