它正被战略失误、人员流失以及最关键的——事实本身——的重压压得喘不过气来。
It’s buckling under the weight of strategic errors, staff turnover, and, most of all, the facts.
这是《大西洋月刊》每日简报的一期，该简报旨在带你纵览当日重大新闻，助你发现新思想，并推荐文化领域的佳作。
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去年，当特朗普总统重返白宫时，复仇便已列入政府议程。首先，联邦调查局清除了那些在特朗普卸任期间参与调查他的特工。其次，司法部启动了一项大规模调查，旨在证明存在一个旨在对特朗普进行政治迫害的“大阴谋”，该调查部分依赖于前特工的配合及其关于不当或非法行为的证词。也许你已经发现了这一计划中的潜在漏洞。但政府显然并未察觉。
When President Trump returned to office last year, the administration had revenge on the agenda. First, the FBI purged agents who’d been involved in investigations into Trump while he was out of office. Second, the Department of Justice launched a major probe to prove a “grand conspiracy” to politically persecute Trump, which would rely in part on the former agents’ cooperation and testimony about improper or illegal actions. Perhaps you have spotted a potential flaw in the plan. The administration apparently did not.
负责调查的团队试图强迫参与2022年8月海湖庄园搜查的特工作证，那次搜查中FBI找回了特朗普从白宫带走的文件。上周，代表参与搜查的特工律师提交了一份动议，称如果他们被迫向大陪审团作证，他们将转述“他们在调查一项有正当依据的指控时的亲身记忆”，即特朗普“非法保留了数百份高度机密文件”，以及“有事实依据的意见，说明这种保留为何以及如何将国家安全置于风险之中”。
The team conducting the probe sought to compel testimony from agents involved in an August 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago, in which the FBI recovered documents that Trump had removed from the White House. Last week, lawyers representing agents involved in the search filed a motion saying that if they were forced to testify to a grand jury, they would relay “their firsthand memories of investigating a properly predicated allegation” that Trump had “unlawfully retained hundreds of highly classified documents,” as well as “factually supported opinions on why and how such retention put the country’s national security at risk.”
这些特工似乎仅仅因为履行职责就已被解雇，他们不急于在法庭上作证说自己参与了任何不当行为，这不应令人意外。尽管此类证词会给司法部的调查带来严重问题，但据《纽约时报》报道，该动议的意图并非破坏调查，而是寻求保证：如果特工作证，他们不会违反联邦法官禁止公布特别检察官杰克·史密斯相关报告的命令。
No one should be surprised that the agents, who appear to have already been fired for simply doing their job, were not eager to testify in court that they’d been involved in anything untoward. Although such testimony would pose serious problems for the DOJ probe, the motion’s intent was not to sabotage it, The New York Times notes, but rather to seek assurances that if the agents testified, they would not be violating a federal judge’s order that bars publication of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report about it. (Smith testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee today—more on that in a moment.)
（史密斯今天向参议院司法委员会作证——稍后详述。）更重要的是，这些特工从来就不太可能掌握检察官想要的那种关于阴谋的罪证。海湖庄园案的事实并不复杂：特朗普带走了文件，其中许多高度敏感；在国家档案馆要求后、后来又通过传票要求时，他都没有交出；并且被发现于海湖庄园持有这些文件。特朗普否认有任何不当行为，但他并未真正对这些事实提出异议。他辩称自己已将这些材料解密——对此他未提供任何证据——并且他合法拥有这些材料。
More to the point, the agents were never likely to have the sort of damning information about a conspiracy that prosecutors want. The facts of the Mar-a-Lago case are not complicated: Trump absconded with documents, many of them highly sensitive; did not turn them over when asked to do so by the National Archives and later via a subpoena; and was found in possession of them at Mar-a-Lago. Trump, who has denied any wrongdoing, didn’t really dispute any of these facts. He argued that he had declassified the materials—a claim for which he provided no evidence—and that he rightfully possessed them. (Prosecutors further alleged that he’d suggested to his lawyers that they hide some documents, and that he’d tried to hide others from them.)
（检方进一步指控称，他曾向自己的律师建议隐瞒部分文件，并试图对律师隐瞒其他文件。）这场旨在将文件案、2016年特朗普竞选团队与俄罗斯关系的调查以及其他针对特朗普盟友的调查串联起来的“大阴谋”调查，一直混乱不堪。今年四月，一名领导该团队的资深职业检察官被撤换，据报道，这是因为她得出结论，认为没有足够证据指控奥巴马总统时期的中情局局长约翰·布伦南（John Brennan）犯有任何罪行。
The grand-conspiracy probe, which attempts to tie together the documents case, investigation of the 2016 Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, and other investigations into Trump allies, has been a mess. In April, a career prosecutor leading the team was removed, reportedly after she concluded that there was not enough evidence to charge John Brennan, the CIA director under President Obama who has repeatedly tangled with Trump, with any crimes. (Brennan is reportedly facing two separate DOJ criminal investigations, which a law professor told The Washington Sun is an indication of either prosecutorial incompetence or malice; those might not be mutually exclusive.)
布伦南曾多次与特朗普发生冲突。（据报道，布伦南正面临美国司法部两项独立的刑事调查，一位法学教授告诉《华盛顿太阳报》，这表明要么是检方无能，要么是出于恶意；这两者可能并不互斥。）接替她的是约瑟夫·迪热诺瓦（Joseph diGenova），他曾在1980年代担任联邦检察官，但近年来更以传播阴谋论而闻名。
She was replaced by Joseph diGenova, who was a federal prosecutor in the 1980s but has more recently been known for propagating conspiracy theories.
2018年特别检察官罗伯特·穆勒（Robert Mueller）的调查期间，他和他的妻子曾被任命为特朗普的辩护团队成员，但很快退出；他们后来还参与了特朗普试图挑战2020年总统选举结果的活动。迪热诺瓦本月早些时候突然辞职，并暗示自己曾受到压力，被要求提出缺乏依据的指控。他对《纽约邮报》表示：“如果你想在没有证据的情况下寻求起诉，那就存在道德问题。”
He and his wife were appointed to Trump’s defense team during Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe in 2018 but quickly withdrew; they were later involved in Trump’s attempt to challenge the 2020 presidential-election results. DiGenova abruptly resigned earlier this month and implied that he had been under pressure to bring unjustified charges. “If you want indictments where there’s no evidence, you have an ethical problem,” he told the New York Post.
昨天，该团队的另一名成员库尔特·奥尔森（Kurt Olsen）也离职了。《纽约时报》报道称，奥尔森在安全许可方面遇到了困难；《华盛顿邮报》则称，他对司法部官员要求加快进度的压力感到沮丧。如果连奥尔森都认为司法部行事草率，那将是令人震惊的：他曾敦促司法部要求最高法院推翻2020年选举结果，最近更是推动更多阴谋论的主要力量，包括关于2020年佐治亚州富尔顿县投票的阴谋论。
Yesterday, another member of the team, Kurt Olsen, departed. The Times reports that Olsen faced difficulties with his security clearance; The Washington Post says that he was also frustrated by pressure from DOJ officials to move faster. If even Olsen thinks DOJ is being hasty, that would be stunning: He pushed DOJ to ask the Supreme Court to overturn the 2020 election and more recently was the driving force behind more conspiracy theories, including about voting in Fulton County, Georgia, in 2020.
像迪杰诺瓦和奥尔森这样的人是死忠派，而不仅仅是深层政府的支持者或趋炎附势的特朗普粉丝。这场大规模阴谋调查的问题在于其根本前提，而非人员配置。特朗普的世界观是零和博弈，无论是在贸易还是外交领域都是如此。这场调查的动机在于，既然特朗普在其刑事调查中遭受了痛苦，那么他的对手必然也做了同样恶劣的事情，并且必须承受同样的痛苦。
People like diGenova and Olsen are die-hard loyalists, not just deep-staters or fair-weather Trump fans. The problem with the grand-conspiracy probe is the fundamental premise, not staffing. Trump’s view of the world is zero-sum, such as in trade or diplomacy. The motive for the probe is that because Trump suffered during his criminal probes, his antagonists must have done something just as bad and must suffer the same.
也许你也能看出这里的漏洞：特朗普及其盟友是从有罪的结论出发，试图逆向寻找指控和证据来证明这一结论。这种风险在今天史密斯的证词中得到了生动展现，那是我见过的政治领域中最令人痛苦的交锋之一。密苏里州参议员埃里克·施密特似乎确信自己抓住了史密斯作伪证的把柄——但事实上，施密特未能区分NBA的亚特兰大老鹰队和爱荷华大学鹰眼队女子篮球队，这不仅摧毁了施密特本人的尊严，也瓦解了他关于史密斯曾秘密会见富尔顿县地方检察官法妮·威利斯以密谋针对特朗普的理论。
Perhaps you can see the flaw here too: Trump and his allies are starting with a conclusion of guilt and attempting to work backwards to find the charges and evidence to justify it. The risks of this were vividly displayed during Smith’s testimony today, in one of the most excruciating exchanges I’ve ever seen in politics. Senator Eric Schmitt of Missouri seemed convinced that he had caught Smith perjuring himself—when, in fact, Schmitt had failed to recognize the difference between the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks and the University of Iowa Hawkeyes women’s basketball team, eviscerating not only Schmitt’s dignity but also his theory that Smith had been covertly meeting with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to conspire against Trump.
关于为了维护法治而对特朗普的各种罪行提起诉讼是否在政治上明智，或者这样做是否只是激怒了他的支持者并助长了党派报复的氛围，一场激烈的辩论仍在继续。从法律角度来看，事情要简单得多。一方面，特朗普确实拿走了文件，特朗普确实试图推翻他输掉的选举，特朗普的2016年竞选团队确实与外国政府有过一系列不当接触。
A robust debate continues about whether it was politically prudent to prosecute Trump for his various offenses in order to uphold the rule of law, or whether doing so simply inflamed his supporters and fostered an atmosphere of partisan retribution. Legally, the matter is simpler. On one side of the ledger, Trump did take the documents, Trump did try to overturn an election that he lost, and Trump’s 2016 campaign did have a series of inappropriate contacts with foreign governments. (The weakest case against Trump involved falsified business records, but that one produced a felony conviction.)
（针对特朗普最弱的案件涉及伪造商业记录，但该案件导致了一项重罪定罪。）另一方面，联邦执法机构履行了职责，调查了这些行为，因此许多人被解雇。鉴于这些事实，司法部正在调查一场大规模阴谋，还是这场调查本身就是阴谋的证据？以下是来自《大西洋月刊》的三篇新报道：今日新闻移民和海关执法局（ICE）计划在今年年底前额外招聘5000名员工，以支持特朗普政府的驱逐行动，这将使其员工规模扩大约17%。
On the other side, federal law-enforcement agencies did their job and investigated those actions, for which many were fired. Given the facts, is the DOJ probe investigating a grand conspiracy, or is it evidence of one? Here are three new stories from The Atlantic: Today’s News ICE plans to hire 5,000 additional employees by the end of the year to support the Trump administration’s deportation campaign, which would expand its workforce by about 17 percent.
预计新聘人员中大多数将是驱逐官员。该机构表示，在去年招聘潮中，数百名新招募人员被解雇后，他们计划采用更严格的审查程序。
Most of the new hires are expected to be deportation officers, and the agency says that it plans to use stricter vetting procedures after hundreds of recruits from last year’s hiring surge were removed.
美国最高法院允许特朗普政府暂时恢复向第三国快速驱逐移民的行动；大法官们将于12月就移民是否必须有机会对可能被驱逐至面临迫害的第三国一事进行抗辩进行听证。
The Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to temporarily resume rapidly deporting immigrants to third countries; the justices will hear arguments in December over whether immigrants must be given an opportunity to contest removal to a third country where they could face persecution.
特朗普政府今日推出了America.gov，这是一款由人工智能驱动的聊天机器人，旨在帮助人们查找有关联邦服务的信息。该工具最初将搜索政府网站，政府计划最终让它帮助用户完成诸如注册医疗保险和更新护照等任务。晚间阅读ICE驱逐者消失于萨尔瓦多监狱作者：凯文·西夫安娜在圣萨尔瓦多机场的到达大厅附近徘徊，盯着美国被驱逐者获释的那扇门。
The Trump administration launched America.gov today, an AI-powered chatbot designed to help people find information about federal services. The tool will initially search government websites, and the administration plans to have it eventually help users complete tasks such as enrolling in Medicare and renewing passports. Evening Read ICE Deportees Are Vanishing Into Salvadoran Prisons By Kevin Sieff Ana paced near the arrivals terminal of the San Salvador airport, eyeing the door where deportees from the United States are released.
五月的一个闷热日子里，她在那里接她的儿子，他此前在得克萨斯州被拘留并被驱逐出境。她决定开车送他回家，并为他做晚饭。他们会再想想接下来该怎么办。
She was there on a sweltering day in May to pick up her son, who had been detained in Texas and deported. She would drive him home, she decided, and cook him dinner. They would figure out what to do next.
但当一群穿着ICE发放的运动服、鞋带被抽掉的男子走出来时，她的儿子并不在其中。她走向一名警察，警察在平板电脑上查询了他的名字。“他正被送往监狱，”警察告诉她。《大西洋月刊》更多报道文化断代之争。斯宾塞·科尔纳贝认为，泰勒·斯威夫特的音乐曾巧妙地颠覆了关于衰老和成年的观念。如今，她似乎只是在倒退。探索。菲丝·希尔撰文探讨吉莲·安德森关于性幻想的立场。拉斐拉·希尼奇为本通讯提供了内容贡献。在此处浏览我们的所有通讯。
But when a group of men walked out wearing ICE-issued sweatsuits, their shoelaces removed from their shoes, her son wasn’t among them. She approached a police officer, who searched his name on a tablet. “He’s being taken to prison,” he told her. More From The Atlantic Culture Break Debate. Taylor Swift’s music once put a clever twist on ideas about aging and adulthood. Now she seems to just be going backwards, Spencer Kornhaber argues. Explore. Faith Hill writes about Gillian Anderson’s case for sexual fantasies. Rafaela Jinich contributed to this newsletter. Explore all of our newsletters here.
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