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| WASHINGTON — For the first time in American history, a former president of the United States has been indicted on criminal charges. It is worth pausing to repeat that: An American president has been indicted for a crime for the first time in history. | 华盛顿——这是美国历史上首次有美国前总统遭受刑事指控。有必要再强调一遍：有史以来第一次，一位美国总统遭到犯罪起诉。 |
| So many unthinkable firsts have occurred since Donald J. Trump was elected to the White House in 2016, so many inviolable lines have been crossed, so many unimaginable events have shocked the world that it is easy to lose sight of just how astonishing this particular moment really is. | 自特朗普2016年入主白宫以来，发生了太多不可想象的第一次，有太多不可侵犯的界限被逾越，太多难以理喻的事件震惊世界，以至于很容易就会忽视这一特殊时刻到底是多么不可思议。 |
| For all of the focus on the tawdry details of the case or its novel legal theory or its political impact, the larger story is of a country heading down a road it has never traveled before, one fraught with profound consequences for the health of the world’s oldest democracy. For more than two centuries, presidents have been held on a pedestal, even the ones swathed in scandal, declared immune from prosecution while in office and, effectively, even afterward. | 此案的种种粗鄙的细节及其涉及的新奇法律理论和政治影响承载了所有关注的目光，但它更广泛的意义还在于，一个国家就这样踏上了从未涉足之路，这将对世界最古老的民主政体的兴衰产生深远影响。两百多年来，总统之位神圣不可侵犯，即便深陷丑闻，总统也能在任职期间——甚至卸任以后——免于起诉。 |
| No longer. That taboo has been broken. A new precedent has been set. Will it tear the country apart, as some feared about putting a former president on trial after Watergate? Will it be seen by many at home and abroad as victor’s justice akin to developing nations where former leaders are imprisoned by their successors? Or will it become a moment of reckoning, a sign that even someone who was once the most powerful person on the planet is not above the law? | 历史先例不再适用。这一禁忌已被打破。新的先例已经确立。前总统受审是否会使得这个国家分裂，就像水门事件后一些人所担忧的那样？国内外是否会有很多人将其视为胜利者的正义，就像继任领导人将前任投入大牢的发展中国家一样？亦或者，这会成为一个清算时刻，表明即使是这个星球上曾经最有权势的人也不能凌驾于法律之上？ |
| “Whether the indictment is warranted or not, it crosses a huge line in American politics and American legal history,” said Jack L. Goldsmith, a Harvard Law professor and former top Justice Department official under President George W. Bush. | “无论起诉理由是否适当，这都是美国政治及美国法制史上一次意义重大的突破，”哈佛大学法学教授、曾在乔治·布什总统任内担任司法部高级官员的杰克·戈德史密斯说道。 |
| If that were not enough to shake the timbers of the republic, the first may not be the last. Mr. Trump could face a second indictment in Georgia and a third from federal prosecutors and potentially even a fourth. | 暂不论这是否足以动摇共和国的根基，破天荒的起诉或许不会到此为止。特朗普可能会在佐治亚州面临第二次起诉，以及来自联邦检察官的第三次，甚至第四次起诉。 |
| There is consternation that the barrier-shattering indictment would involve something as unseemly as paying hush money to cover up a sexual romp. Given that the defendant has been involved in far more earth-shattering events like trying to overturn an election and inspiring an attack on the Capitol to prevent the transfer of power, the allegations by Manhattan prosecutors seem less than epochal. | 让人始料未及的是，这场打破藩篱的起诉涉及支付封口费掩盖桃色丑闻这种不体面的事体。考虑到被告人曾经参与的那些更为惊天动地的事件——从试图推翻选举到煽动对国会山发起袭击以阻止权力移交，曼哈顿检方提起的指控似乎没有那么强烈的划时代意义。 |
| But if the issue is accountability, then the case could redraw the lines and make it less daunting for prosecutors in Georgia and Washington to follow suit by charging more serious crimes if they have the evidence, since they will not have to bear the burden of justifying action never taken before. Leave it to the only president ever impeached in Congress twice to face so many prosecutions that lawyers need a scorecard just to keep track. | 但重点若在于问责，那此案可能会重新划定界限，减轻佐治亚州和华盛顿检察官跟进的压力，在掌握证据的情况下提出更严重的指控，因为他们无需再承受为前所未有之举辩护的负担。就让这些多到需要律师用记分卡统计的起诉全留给这唯一一位在国会被弹劾两次的总统吧。 |
| While the indictment of Mr. Trump takes the country into uncharted waters, the authors of the Constitution might have been surprised only that it took so long. Justice Department policy maintains that sitting presidents cannot be indicted, but the framers explicitly contemplated the prospect of them being charged after leaving office. | 虽然起诉特朗普让这个国家面临未知，但宪法起草者们大概只会对起诉如此姗姗来迟感到惊讶。司法部政策坚称现任总统不能被起诉，但制宪者倒是明确考虑到了总统离任后被起诉的可能性。 |
| A president impeached by the House and convicted and removed from office by the Senate “shall nevertheless be liable and subject to indictment, trial, judgment and punishment, according to law,” Article I, Section 3 of the Constitution declares. | 宪法第一条第三款规定，总统若被众议院弹劾定罪，且被参议院免职，“仍应负有刑责而得依法被起诉、审理、判决和惩罚”。 |
| “Generally, we consider that language to suggest that, whatever may happen with respect to an impeachment while a president is in office, he still may be held liable civilly or criminally after he leaves office for his misconduct in office,” said Michael J. Gerhardt, a constitutional law professor at the University of North Carolina. | “总的来说，我们对这一措辞的解读是，无论总统在任期间遭受了何种弹劾，他离任后仍可能因其任内的不当行为承担民事或刑事责任，”北卡罗来纳大学宪法教授迈克尔·格哈特表示。 |
| In other words, no former president was immune from criminal liability. “The framers would have been horrified at the possibility of a president ever being above the law while in office or after leaving it,” Mr. Gerhardt said. | 换而言之，任何前总统都不能免于刑事责任。“若是知道有哪个总统可能在任内或卸任后凌驾于法律之上，制宪者定会感到震惊，”格哈特说。 |
| Indeed, while voting to acquit Mr. Trump at his second impeachment trial — the one charging him with inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol — Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader from Kentucky, said he did so because Mr. Trump was no longer in office but added that he was still subject to criminal prosecution. | 事实上，在指控特朗普煽动2021年1月6日国会山袭击事件的第二次弹劾审判中，来自肯塔基州的共和党领袖米奇·麦康奈尔参议员声称，自己投他无罪是因为特朗普已经离任，但他也表示，特朗普仍可面临刑事起诉。 |
| “My view is that so long as the case that is brought is for a crime that is not unusual to charge, and the proof is also as strong as one would normally have — i.e. that one wards against the problem of selective prosecution — then it is imperative that we hold politicians to account regardless of what position they hold or held,” said Andrew Weissmann, a deputy to Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel who investigated the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. | “我的观点是，只要提起的案件是一般情况下会起诉的罪行，且证据也像通常情况下一样有力——也就是说不会被视为选择性起诉——那我们就必须向政客问责，不管他们正在或曾经担任何种职位，”罗伯特·穆勒的副手安德鲁·韦斯曼说，穆勒曾是负责调查特朗普竞选活动与俄罗斯关系的特别检察官。 |
| Meena Bose, who is the executive dean of Hofstra University’s Peter S. Kalikow School of Government and runs a presidential history project, said that a country plagued by polarization and concerns about democracy would be stronger by enforcing responsibility on its leaders. “An active and continuing commitment to making sure all public officials follow the rule of law is essential to addressing those challenges,” she said. | 霍夫斯特拉大学彼得·卡利科政府学院执行院长、负责一个总统历史项目研究的米娜·博斯表示，要求领导人必须承担责任会让这个饱受极化困扰、对民主制度忧心忡忡的国家更加强大。“积极并持续致力于确保所有公职人员遵守法治，是应对这些挑战的关键，”她说。 |
| But others worry about the long-term consequences for the presidency, not least because this indictment is being brought by a local prosecutor rather than the Justice Department, opening the door to prosecutors around the country taking it upon themselves to go after a president. | 但也有人担心这对总统职位的长期影响，尤其是因为，这次起诉是由一名地方检察官而不是司法部提出的，这为全国各地的检察官自行追究总统责任打开了大门。 |
| In 2008, voters in two small towns in liberal Vermont approved resolutions accusing Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney of “crimes against the Constitution” and instructing their town attorneys to draft indictments. Nothing ever came of it, but it is not hard to imagine a conservative local prosecutor trying to charge President Biden with, say, failing to adequately guard the border. | 2008年，自由派的佛蒙特州两个小镇的选民通过决议，指控小布什和副总统迪克·切尼犯有“违宪罪”，并指示镇上的律师起草起诉书。虽然没有任何结果，但不难想象，一位保守的地方检察官会试图指控拜登总统没有充分保护边境之类的罪名。 |
| Mr. Goldsmith said any prosecution could tear at the fabric of the system. “Especially if this indictment is followed by even a justified indictment from the special counsel, we will see recriminations and retributions in the medium term, all to the detriment of our political national health,” he said. | 戈德史密斯说，任何起诉都可能撕毁这个体系的结构。他说：“特别是，如果这次起诉之后，特别检察官提出了合理的起诉，我们将在中期内看到相互指责和报复，这一切都会在政治层面上损害我们的国家健康。” |
| Mr. Trump’s allies branded the Manhattan case political even before any indictment without waiting to review the actual evidence. Whatever Alvin L. Bragg, the district attorney, turned up was immaterial — to defend their party’s most recent president, and possible next nominee, they preemptively declared the prosecution illegitimate because it was brought by a Democrat. | 甚至在没有评估实际证据的情况下、在出现任何起诉之前，特朗普的盟友就给曼哈顿的案件打上了政治的烙印。无论地区检察官阿尔文·布拉格发现了什么都无关紧要——为了捍卫他们政党的上一位总统，以及可能的下一任提名人，他们先发制人地宣布起诉是非法的，因为起诉是由民主党人提起的。 |
| Representative Mark E. Green, Republican of Tennessee and the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, compared any prosecution of Mr. Trump to political cases in less developed countries. “Daniel Ortega arrested his opposition in Nicaragua and we call that a horrible thing,” he said last week. “Mr. Biden, Mr. President, think about that.” | 田纳西州共和党众议员、众议院国土安全委员会主席马克·格林把对特朗普的起诉比作欠发达国家的政治案件。“丹尼尔·奥尔特加在尼加拉瓜逮捕了他的反对派，我们称这是一件可怕的事情，”他上周表示。“拜登先生，总统先生，请考虑一下。” |
| Locking up former leaders on specious, politically driven charges may be common in the world’s autocracies, but some of the most advanced democracies have not shied away from putting their leaders on trial for crimes. In Israel, former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert spent more than a year in prison for bribery, fraud and other charges while the incumbent prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is currently on trial on similar charges. | 以似是而非的、出于政治目的的指控关押前领导人在专制国家可能很常见，但一些最发达的民主国家也并不回避将其领导人送上法庭。在以色列，前总理埃胡德·奥尔默特因受贿、欺诈和其他指控在监狱中度过了一年多的时间，现任总理本雅明·内塔尼亚胡目前正因类似指控接受审判。 |
| In Italy, former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who just regained some power as part of a governing coalition, has faced 35 criminal court cases during his long career, although he was definitively convicted just once for tax fraud and sentenced to a year of community service. Just last month, he was acquitted on charges of bribing witnesses at a previous underage prostitution trial. | 在意大利，前总理西尔维奥·贝卢斯科尼刚刚作为执政联盟的一员重新获得一些权力，在漫长的职业生涯中，他面临过35起刑事诉讼，尽管他只有一次因税务欺诈被明确定罪，并被判处一年的社区服务。他曾经涉及一起未成年人卖淫案，被指控贿赂证人，上个月，法院裁定他无罪获释。 |
| Other leaders of democratic nations convicted in recent years include former Presidents Jacques Chirac (embezzlement) and Nicolas Sarkozy (influence peddling) in France, former President Park Geun-hye (corruption) in South Korea and former President Chen Shui-bian (bribery) in Taiwan. | 近年来被定罪的其他民主领导人包括法国前总统雅克·希拉克（挪用公款）和尼古拉·萨科齐（以权谋私）、韩国前总统朴槿惠（腐败）和台湾前总统陈水扁（受贿）。 |
| In the United States, Teapot Dome, Watergate, Iran-contra and Whitewater never put a president in the dock. The only sitting president to see the inside of a police station as a defendant was Ulysses S. Grant, who was stopped for speeding down the streets of Washington in his horse-drawn carriage. He paid $20 and went on his way. | 在美国，茶壶山事件、水门事件、伊朗门事件和白水事件从来没有把哪一位总统送上被告台。唯一一位以被告身份进入警局的在任总统是尤利西斯·格兰特，当时他驾驶马车在华盛顿的街道上超速行驶，被警察拦下，而他付了20美元就走了。 |
| While no president has ever been indicted before, an early vice president, Aaron Burr, was put on trial for treason after leaving office for plotting to carve off Western territories into a new country, although he was acquitted. Nearly two centuries later, another vice president, Spiro T. Agnew, resigned amid a plea deal in a corruption case. | 虽然以前没有总统被起诉过，但早期的副总统亚伦·伯尔在卸任后因密谋将西部领土分割成一个新国家而以叛国罪受审，不过后来被无罪释放。将近两个世纪后，另一位副总统斯皮罗·阿格纽因在一起腐败案中认罪辞职。 |
| Mr. Trump would not be barred from running for his old office by an indictment or even a conviction. In 1920, Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist leader, mounted his fifth bid for the White House from prison, where he was serving time for his opposition to World War I. He received 919,799 votes, or 3.4 percent of those cast. Of course, unlike Mr. Trump, he was not a major-party candidate and had no prospects of winning. | 特朗普不会因为起诉甚至定罪而被禁止竞选他的旧职位。1920年，社会党领袖尤金·德布斯在监狱里第五次竞选总统，当时他因为反对第一次世界大战而入狱。他获得了919799张选票，占总票数的3.4%。当然，与特朗普不同的是，他不是主要政党的候选人，也没有获胜的希望。 |
| At least a couple other presidents worried about being indicted after office. Richard M. Nixon was pardoned by his successor, Gerald R. Ford, a month after resigning, sparing him any prosecution in the Watergate scandal. Bill Clinton struck a deal with Whitewater prosecutors on his last full day in office in which he admitted providing false testimony under oath about his affair with Monica S. Lewinsky, gave up his law license for five years and paid a $25,000 fine in exchange for not facing charges as a private citizen. | 至少还曾有几位总统担心在卸任后会被起诉。理查德·尼克松在辞职一个月后被他的继任者杰拉尔德·福特赦免，使他在水门丑闻中免于受到起诉。比尔·克林顿在其任期的最后一天与白水事件检察官达成了一项协议，承认在宣誓后就自己与莫妮卡·莱温斯基的婚外情提供了虚假证词，为此他放弃五年的律师执照，并支付2.5万美元的罚款，以换取不以普通公民身份面临指控。 |
| In pardoning Mr. Nixon, Mr. Ford was not trying to set a precedent barring future prosecutions of a president, said the historian Richard Norton Smith, whose biography of Mr. Ford, “An Ordinary Man,” will be published next month. Instead, he was trying to move the country beyond Watergate as he confronted challenges like inflation, the last vestiges of the Vietnam War and deep public cynicism. | 历史学家理查德·诺顿·史密斯为福特写的传记《一个普通人》(An Ordinary Man)将于下月出版，他说，福特赦免尼克松并不是想开一个先例，禁止未来起诉总统，而是想让这个国家走出水门事件，因为他面临着通货膨胀、越南战争的收尾和公众的深刻怀疑等挑战。 |
| “He wasn’t forgiving Nixon so much as he was trying to forget him,” Mr. Smith said. “That is, to counter the popular, political and media obsession that, quite understandably, had formed around the previously unthinkable concept of an American president facing jail time. And the existence of which prevented him from doing his job or the American people from moving on to confront all the problems that Nixon left behind him.” | “与其说他宽恕尼克松，不如说他试图忘记尼克松，”史密斯说。“也就是说，是为了抵制大众、政治和媒体的痴迷，可以理解的是，这种痴迷是围绕着一个美国总统面临牢狱之灾这个以前不可想象的概念而形成的。这种情况的存在让他无法做他该做的事情，也让美国人难以翻过这一页，去正视和处理尼克松留下的所有问题。” |
| That decision, he added, should not mean that Mr. Trump is handed a get-out-of-jail-free card due to Mr. Ford. “It seems more than a little unfair to make him a scapegoat for the wrongdoing of subsequent presidents,” Mr. Smith said. “As he himself warned in 1980, if voters ever chose an arrogant president ‘and I mean in a vicious way — God help the country.’” | 他还说，这一决定不应意味着特朗普因为福特而得到了一块“免罪金牌”。“让福特成为后续总统错误行为的替罪羊，这似乎有点不公平，”史密斯说。“正如他自己在1980年警告的那样，如果选民选择了一位嚣张的总统，‘我是说以一种危险的方式，上帝保佑这个国家。’” |
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