唐纳德·特朗普在纽约封口费审判中被判所有罪名成立
【中美创新时报2024 年 5 月 31 日编译讯】（记者温友平编译）纽约陪审团周四（30日）裁定唐纳德·特朗普犯有 34 项伪造商业记录以隐瞒向一名成人电影女演员支付封口费的罪名，这一历史性判决可能会影响 11 月的选举，并使特朗普成为第一位被判有罪的前美国总统。《华盛顿邮报》记者Shayna Jacobs、Devlin Barrett、Derek Hawkins 和 Mark Berman 对此作了下述详细报道。
这项判决对这位共和党提名人而言是一个巨大的损失，在整个审判过程中，他几乎每天都在法庭外发表长篇大论，严厉批评司法系统并宣称自己无罪。
12 名陪审员的名字被法官隐去，不让公众看到，他们花了一天多一点的时间权衡特朗普的重罪指控，然后一致作出判决，称特朗普犯有罪。
现年 77 岁的特朗普在首次成名的城市被判定为重罪犯，将面临最高3年11个月至 4 年的监禁。鉴于他的年龄和没有犯罪前科，他可能会服刑较短或根本不服刑。
纽约最高法院法官胡安·默坎安排这位前总统的宣判时间是 7 月 11 日——就在共和党全国代表大会开始前几天，特朗普将在该大会上正式获得共和党提名。
这项判决将美国推向了前所未有的境地，其影响将在未来几个月内波及美国政坛。在等待宣判期间，特朗普将继续竞选以夺回白宫。特朗普还被指控犯有另外三起刑事案件，预计将对纽约的判决提出上诉；无论是定罪还是判刑都不会阻止他担任总统。
宣读判决后，特朗普被告知他可以无需保释就获得自由。他转向儿子埃里克，两人严肃地握手，然后特朗普满脸通红地离开法庭。埃里克和他的兄弟小唐纳德·特朗普参加了父亲数天的审判，而前第一夫人梅拉尼娅·特朗普和前总统的女儿伊万卡没有出席。
在法庭外，特朗普再次宣称自己无罪，称审判是“耻辱”，并错误地坚称该案是由他在 11 月 5 日大选中的对手拜登总统推动的。
“这是一场由腐败的、心存矛盾的法官操纵的审判，”特朗普说。“真正的判决将在 11 月 5 日由人民做出，他们知道这里发生了什么。”
此次定罪是曼哈顿检察官的一次重大胜利，他们提起了一起具有巨大全国影响的当地案件，尽管他们的联邦同行多年前拒绝就此事对特朗普提出起诉。
“虽然这名被告可能与美国历史上的其他任何被告都不一样，但我们在审判中，以及最终在今天做出判决时，与法庭上审理的其他案件一样，”曼哈顿地区检察官阿尔文·布拉格 (D) 在判决后表示，“我们遵循事实和法律，不畏惧也不偏袒。”
当被问及质疑起诉书的法律评论员和分析师时——一些人称这是特朗普面临的四起刑事诉讼中最弱的——布拉格说，只有一个群体对案件的看法最终很重要。
“今天，我们拥有最重要的声音，”布拉格在新闻发布会上说，这是他自审判开始以来首次就此案发表长篇公开讲话。“这是陪审员的声音。”
审判于 4 月中旬开始，关键在于向成人电影女演员斯托米·丹尼尔斯支付的 13 万美元，她声称 2006 年在太浩湖酒店房间与特朗普发生性关系。特朗普否认他们发生过性关系。
特朗普曾经的律师兼调解人迈克尔·科恩 (Michael Cohen) 在 2016 年总统大选前夕向丹尼尔斯支付了费用，以阻止她公开分享她与他人幽会的指控。科恩随后每月从特朗普那里获得报销款项，这些款项在特朗普公司保存的文件中被记录为律师费。检察官表示，将这些款项归类为律师费是犯罪行为。
检察官指控特朗普监督“长期阴谋影响 2016 年大选”。政府对该案的复杂理论建立在相互关联的涉嫌犯罪行为之上，因此陪审员得到了一套复杂的指示。
辩护律师辩称，2017 年每月向科恩支付的 35,000 美元实际上是法律服务的报酬，商业记录的分类是正确的。辩护团队还严厉批评了科恩，他是检方的关键证人，已承认多项罪行，包括向国会撒谎。
“你不能根据迈克尔·科恩的话，毫无合理怀疑地判定特朗普总统有罪，”辩护律师托德·布兰奇告诉陪审员。
科恩告诉陪审员，他是按照特朗普的指示安排丹尼尔斯的付款的。他是唯一一位作证说他的前任老板直接参与其中的证人。辩护律师对科恩进行了残酷的盘问，指责他在证人席上撒谎，并将他描绘成一心想让特朗普受到惩罚的人。
布兰奇在判决后表示，尽管科恩试图说服陪审员，但陪审员似乎接受了科恩的证词。
“归根结底，如果迈克尔·科恩的话根本不被接受，那么你就不可能判特朗普总统有罪，”布兰奇在判决几个小时后在 CNN 上表示。“陪审团判有罪。所以最终，他们忽略了我们认为科恩先生的故事和过去中致命的缺陷，并做出了有罪判决。”
他还表示，他不认为纽约是审判特朗普的“公平场所”。
据知情人士透露，对科恩可信度的担忧是联邦检察官拒绝就几年前的封口费指控特朗普的原因之一，这些知情人士在匿名的情况下向《华盛顿邮报》透露了内部讨论情况。
但布拉格的办公室继续审查这个问题。在他的办公室里，封口费指控被称为“僵尸”案，因为多年来，它似乎毫无生气，但并没有真正死去。去年，曼哈顿的一个大陪审团采取了历史性的步骤，投票起诉了特朗普，这是他在五个月内四次被指控中的第一次。
周四的判决是特朗普自去年以来在纽约法庭上的最新一次法律败诉。他输掉了两起民事诉讼，败诉方是作家 E. Jean Carroll，后者指控他殴打和诽谤，并被勒令向她支付近 9000 万美元；他正在上诉。在纽约州总检察长 Letitia James (D) 提起的民事欺诈诉讼之后，他还被处以近 5 亿美元的罚款，不过他在上诉期间被允许支付较低的保释金。
特朗普在佛罗里达州、佐治亚州和华盛顿特区面临刑事案件——但由于上诉和审前动议，很可能这些案件都不会在选举日之前开庭审理。
曼哈顿的陪审团的任务是决定特朗普是否对每一项伪造商业记录的具体指控有罪，以及他是否试图非法影响选举。检察官提出了三种可能引发非法干预选举指控的潜在罪行；陪审员不必一致同意他们认为哪一种罪行是罪魁祸首。
一个由七名男性和五名女性组成的陪审团于周三开始审议，他们在四月份为期一周的选拔过程中入选。几个小时后，他们表示希望听取部分审判证词和 Merchan 向他们重复的一些指示。周四上午发生这种情况后，陪审员撤退到陪审团室继续审议。
律师们准备在下午 4:30 离开法庭，不做裁决，并于周五早上返回。然后陪审团室发来一张纸条。
“我们陪审团已经做出裁决，”纸条上写道。
特朗普和他的法律团队随后花了半个小时等待陪审团填写冗长的陪审团表格。
陪审员们神情严肃地进入陪审团席，宣布他们的裁决。法庭上所有人的目光都集中在陪审团主席身上，他从座位上站起来，逐项宣布他们的裁决。在他重复了 34 次“有罪”之后，书记员对陪审员进行了单独调查，以确认他们一致同意。
特朗普皱着眉头看着他们，双手放在膝盖上。
随后，梅尔坎感谢陪审员们的工作，称他们“面临一项非常紧张和艰巨的任务”。他还告诉他们，他们现在可以自由讨论此案，但不必这样做。
不久之后，他们走出法庭，最后一次走到特朗普面前。像往常一样，他们向前看，但没有直接看他。
布拉格离开了法庭。他的审判团队面带微笑，在法庭上停留了几分钟，手里拿着他们的笔录和其他材料。
陪审团在两天内进行了大约 11 个小时的审议，包括周四听取证词和重复指示的时间。
前联邦检察官、现私人执业的罗伯特·明茨 (Robert Mintz) 表示：“这项裁决的速度令人震惊”，尤其是考虑到该案的法律复杂性。
“这表明，尽管辩方对迈克尔·科恩的可信度提出了质疑，但陪审团认为这对检察官来说是压倒性的案件，陪审员对这一结果几乎没有异议，”他说。
在审判期间，证人的证词经常转向肮脏的领域，提供了关于小报做法以及名人和有权势的人如何隐藏丑闻和指控的广泛教育。
丹尼尔斯详细地作证说，她和特朗普在 2006 年的一场名人高尔夫锦标赛上相遇时发生了什么。她描述了有时听起来像是与特朗普发生非自愿性接触的情况，导致他的律师要求审判无效，但没有成功。
特朗普最终没有出庭作证——这是一种不太可能的情况，但他公开坚持在整个诉讼过程中都会出现这种情况。
相反，他在进出法庭的路上经常嘲笑这个案件，经常谴责麦肯和布拉格。
麦肯发布了一项禁言令，禁止特朗普对案件的证人或陪审员发表评论。他裁定特朗普 10 次违反禁言令，并两次判定他藐视法庭，并警告说，如果这种情况继续下去，他可能会被判入狱。
在法庭上，特朗普可能是一个被动的人物，在证人作证时闭上了眼睛，这导致人们猜测他打瞌睡了——但他否认了这一点。其他时候，他怒目而视或显得愤怒，包括丹尼尔斯作证时，这导致默查恩告诉特朗普的律师，这位前总统“大声咒骂”，需要停止。
在审判的最后阶段，特朗普在一群轮流的政治盟友和支持者的陪同下来到曼哈顿法院，他们坐在法庭后面，并在附近公园的摄像机前谴责和质疑审判。
其中一些盟友周四对审判结果进行了猛烈抨击。众议院议长迈克·约翰逊 (R-La.) 称这是“美国历史上可耻的一天”，而众议院多数党领袖史蒂夫·斯卡利塞 (R-La.) 谴责他所说的“滥用权力的背后是激进的党派民主党人”。
拜登竞选团队在一份声明中表示，判决结果显示“没有人可以凌驾于法律之上”，同时指出特朗普仍将在 11 月的选举中参选。
如果特朗普赢得那场选举，他将重新获得总统的广泛赦免权力。然而，他无法赦免自己，因为他周四在州法院被定罪。总统只能对联邦指控给予赦免。
华盛顿的玛丽安·莱文对本报道做出了贡献。
题图：前总统唐纳德·特朗普在陪审团判处他犯有重罪后，于 5 月 30 日在纽约曼哈顿刑事法庭向媒体发表评论，罪名是伪造商业记录，企图非法影响 2016 年大选。SETH WENIG/美联社
附原英文报道：
Donald Trump found guilty on all counts in New York hush money trial
By Shayna Jacobs, Devlin Barrett, Derek Hawkins and Mark Berman The Washington Post,Updated May 31, 2024
NEW YORK – A New York jury on Thursday found Donald Trump guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal a hush money payment to an adult-film actress, delivering a historic verdict that could shape the November election and that makes Trump the first former U.S. president convicted of a crime.
The verdict is an extraordinary loss for the presumptive GOP nominee, who delivered near-daily tirades outside the courtroom throughout the trial – excoriating the justice system and declaring his innocence.
Twelve jurors, whose names were shielded by the judge from public view, spent a little more than a day weighing the felony counts against Trump before returning their judgment unanimously saying otherwise.
Trump, 77, faces a maximum sentence of 1 1/3 to four years in prison after being deemed a felon in the city where he first rose to prominence. Given his age and lack of a prior criminal record, he could serve a shorter sentence or no term of incarceration at all.
New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan scheduled the former president’s sentencing for July 11 – just days before the start of the Republican National Convention, where Trump is set to be formally nominated by his party.
The verdict propels the country into unprecedented territory, and its impact will reverberate across U.S. politics in the coming months. While awaiting his sentence, Trump will continue to campaign to reclaim the White House. Trump, who has been charged in three other criminal cases, is expected to appeal the New York verdict; neither the conviction nor any sentence he may receive prevents him from serving as president.
After the verdict was read, Trump was told he could go free without bail. He turned to his son, Eric, and the two shared a stern handshake before Trump left the courtroom with a grimace, his face flushed. While Eric and his brother, Donald Trump Jr., attended multiple days of their father’s trial, former first lady Melania Trump and the former president’s daughter Ivanka stayed away.
Outside the courtroom, Trump again declared himself innocent, calling the trial “a disgrace” and falsely insisting that the case was driven by President Biden, his opponent in the Nov. 5 election.
“This was a rigged trial by a conflicted judge who was corrupt,” Trump said. “The real verdict is going to be November 5, by the people, and they know what happened here.”
The conviction is a major victory for Manhattan prosecutors, who brought a local case with immense national implications even after their federal counterparts declined to seek an indictment against Trump in the matter years earlier.
“While this defendant may be unlike any other in American history, we arrived at this trial, and ultimately today at this verdict, in the same manner as every other case that comes through the courtroom doors,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D), the elected prosecutor whose office brought the case, said after the verdict, “by following the facts and the law, and by doing so without fear or favor.”
Asked about legal commentators and analysts who questioned the indictment – with some calling it the weakest of four criminal prosecutions facing Trump – Bragg said there was only one group whose view of the case ultimately mattered.
“Today, we have the most important voice of all,” Bragg said at a news conference, delivering his first extended public remarks about the trial since it began. “And that’s the voice of the jurors.”
The trial, which began in mid-April, hinged on a $130,000 payment made to Stormy Daniels, an adult-film actress who alleged a sexual encounter with Trump in a Lake Tahoe hotel room in 2006. Trump denies they had sex.
Michael Cohen, Trump’s onetime attorney and fixer, paid Daniels on the eve of the 2016 presidential election to keep her from publicly sharing her claims of a tryst. Cohen was then given monthly reimbursement payments from Trump that were recorded as legal fees in documents maintained by Trump’s company. Prosecutors say classifying the payments as legal fees was criminal.
Prosecutors accused Trump of overseeing “a long-running conspiracy to influence the 2016 election.” The government’s complex theory of the case was built on interlocking alleged criminal violations, and jurors were given a convoluted set of instructions as a result.
Defense attorneys argued that monthly $35,000 payments made to Cohen in 2017 were in fact compensation for legal services and that the classification of the business records was correct. The defense team also took blistering aim at Cohen, the prosecution’s key witness who has pleaded guilty to multiple crimes, including lying to Congress.
“You cannot convict President Trump of any crime beyond a reasonable doubt on the words of Michael Cohen,” defense lawyer Todd Blanche had told jurors.
Cohen told jurors that he was acting at Trump’s direction in arranging the Daniels payment. He was the only witness to testify that his former boss was directly involved. Defense attorneys subjected Cohen to brutal cross-examination, accusing him of lying on the stand and painting him as singularly focused on seeing Trump punished.
Blanche said after the verdict that it appeared jurors accepted Cohen’s testimony despite his attempts to convince them otherwise.
“At the end of the day, it remains true that if the word of Michael Cohen was not accepted at all, then you could not have convicted President Trump,” Blanche said on CNN a few hours after the verdict was reached. “And the jury convicted. So at the end of the day, they looked past what we thought were fatal flaws in Mr. Cohen’s story and his past, and they reached a guilty verdict.”
He also said he did not believe New York was “a fair place” to put Trump on trial.
Concerns about Cohen’s credibility were part of the reason federal prosecutors declined to pursue charges against Trump in connection with the hush money payment years earlier, according to people familiar with the decision who spoke to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity to reveal internal discussions.
But Bragg’s office continued scrutinizing the issue. The hush money allegations had been known around his office as the “zombie” case because for years, it seemed lifeless without truly dying. Last year, a Manhattan grand jury took the historic step of voting to indict Trump, the first of four times he was charged in a span of about five months.
The verdict Thursday was Trump’s latest legal defeat in a New York court since last year. He lost two civil cases to the writer E. Jean Carroll, who accused him of battery and defamation, and was ordered to pay her nearly $90 million; he is appealing. He was also hit with nearly half a billion dollars in penalties following a civil fraud lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James (D), though he was allowed to post a lower bond while appealing that decision.
And Trump faces criminal cases in Florida, Georgia and D.C. – though due to appeals and pretrial motions, it is quite possible none of them will go to trial before Election Day.
The jury in Manhattan was tasked with deciding whether Trump was guilty on each specific count of falsifying business records and whether he did so in an effort to unlawfully impact an election. Prosecutors offered three types of underlying crimes that could raise the unlawful election-meddling allegation; jurors did not have to be unanimous about which of those they felt was at play.
A jury of seven men and five women – seated during a week-long selection process in April – began deliberations Wednesday and, within hours, said they wanted to hear part of the trial testimony and some of Merchan’s instructions repeated to them. After that happened Thursday morning, the jurors retreated to the jury room to continue deliberations.
Attorneys were preparing to leave court for the day at 4:30 p.m. without a verdict and return Friday morning. Then a note from the jury room arrived.
“We the jury have a verdict,” the note said.
Trump and his legal team then spent an agonizing half-hour waiting while the panel filled out the lengthy jury form.
Jurors looked solemn as they filed into the jury box to reveal their verdict. All eyes in the courtroom were on the jury foreman as he rose from his seat to deliver their findings count by count. After he repeated “guilty” 34 times, once for each count, the jurors were individually polled by the clerk to confirm they were unanimous.
Trump watched them, frowning, his hands resting on his lap.
Merchan then thanked the jurors for their work, saying they had “a very stressful and difficult task.” He also told them that they were now free to discuss the case but did not have to.
They filed out of court a short while later, walking one final time in front of Trump. As usual, they looked forward but not directly at him.
Bragg left the courtroom. His trial team, all smiles, remained for several minutes, holding their transcripts and other materials.
The jury had deliberated for about 11 hours across two days, including the time spent hearing testimony and instructions repeated Thursday.
“The speed with which this verdict was returned is shocking,” particularly given the legal complexity of the case, said Robert Mintz, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice.
“It signals that despite the doubts raised by the defense about the credibility of Michael Cohen, the jury viewed this as an overwhelming case for prosecutors and there was little dissent among jurors about this outcome,” he said.
During the trial, witness testimony frequently veered into sordid territory, offering an expansive education about tabloid practices as well as how famous, powerful people work to keep scandalous stories and allegations hidden.
Daniels testified in graphic detail about what she said happened between her and Trump in 2006, when they met at a celebrity golf tournament. She described what sounded at times like a nonconsensual sexual encounter with him, leading his attorneys to unsuccessfully call for a mistrial.
Trump ultimately did not take the stand – an unlikely scenario, but one he publicly insisted was on the table throughout the proceedings.
Instead, he frequently pilloried the case on his way in and out of court, often castigating Merchan and Bragg.
Merchan had issued a gag order prohibiting Trump from commenting on witnesses or jurors in the case. He ruled that Trump violated the gag order 10 different times and twice found him in contempt of court, warning that jail time could follow if that continued.
Inside the courtroom, Trump could be a passive figure and closed his eyes while witnesses testified, leading to speculation that he had dozed off – something that he denies. Other times, he glowered or appeared angry, including when Daniels testified, leading Merchan to tell Trump’s lawyer the former president was “cursing audibly” and needed to stop.
In the trial’s final stretch, Trump was accompanied to the Manhattan courthouse by a rotating entourage of political allies and supporters, who sat behind him in the courtroom and appeared before cameras in a nearby park to denounce and question the trial.
Some of those allies pilloried the outcome Thursday. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) called it “a shameful day in American history,” while House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) decried what he called “radical partisan Democrats behind this abuse of power.”
Biden’s campaign said in a statement that the verdict showed “no one is above the law,” while noting that Trump would still be on the ballot in November.
If Trump wins that election, he would regain the presidency’s broad power to grant pardons. He could not, however, pardon himself, because he was convicted Thursday in state court. Presidents can only grant clemency on federal charges.
Berman reported from Washington. Marianne LeVine in Washington contributed to this report.
