唐纳德·特朗普的司法部竟将调查这位深陷丑闻的共和党总统的检察官列为目标，已经够令人愤怒了。然而令人难以置信的是，得知高度政治化的司法部还在重新审视调查这位深陷丑闻的共和党总统的检察官，更是无异于雪上加霜。
It’s outrageous enough that Donald Trump’s Justice Department has targeted the prosecutors who investigated the scandal-plagued Republican president. Though it seems hard to believe, it adds insult to injury to learn that the hyperpoliticized DOJ is also taking a fresh look at the prosecutors who investigated a scandal-plagued Republican president.
《华尔街日报》报道称，据知情人士透露，该部门正在审查负责调查水门事件那次著名闯入案的特别检察官办公室是否存在不当行为；距离这桩丑闻导致尼克松辞职，已经过去半个多世纪。
The Wall Street Journal reported The department is reviewing whether the special prosecutor’s office that investigated the famed Watergate break-in committed misconduct, according to people familiar with the matter, more than half a century after that scandal led to Nixon’s resignation.
杰夫·谢泼德曾任尼克松助手，后来成为研究水门事件、持修正主义立场的历史学者。最近，他在司法部总部作了长达两个小时的演讲，阐述其理论，称是“深层国家”扳倒了尼克松。他这份78页幻灯片的标题是《将水门事件用作法律战》。据《华尔街日报》的报道，就在上个月，一名司法部高级官员邀请谢泼德前往司法部总部，向职业责任办公室陈述其观点。司法部发言人也正式向媒体确认，此事确有其事。
Geoff Shepard, a former Nixon aide turned Watergate historian and revisionist, recently gave a two-hour presentation at Justice Department headquarters that laid out his theory that the deep state took Nixon down. The title of his 78-page slide deck: “Watergate As Lawfare.”According to the Journal’s article, it was just last month when a senior Justice Department official invited Shepard to come to Main Justice and make his case before the Office of Professional Responsibility. A Justice Department spokesperson confirmed on the record that this actually happened.
《华尔街日报》称：“这项审查目前仍处于初步阶段，尚不清楚是否会引发全面调查。”如果这一切听起来有些熟悉，那是因为特朗普团队最近频繁聚焦尼克松和水门事件。
“The review is preliminary,” the Journal said, “and it isn’t clear whether it will lead to a full-fledged probe.”If this sounds at all familiar, it’s because Team Trump has been focused on Nixon and Watergate quite a bit lately.
比如，就在几个月前，埃德·马丁在以备受争议的美国特赦检察官身份卸任前，曾在社交媒体上发布了一则匪夷所思的内容，声称水门事件是一场部分由中央情报局策划的“骗局”。
Just a few months ago, for example, Ed Martin, before he stepped down as the highly controversial U.S. pardon attorney, published a bizarre item to social media, arguing that the Watergate scandal was a “hoax” orchestrated in part by the CIA.
马丁补充道：“唯一比撒谎的中央情报局更糟糕的，是口是心非的骗子约翰·迪恩[他曾任尼克松的白宫法律顾问]和小说家[鲍勃]伍德沃德。愿他们永世受难。”
Martin added, “The only thing worse than the lying CIA is the two-faced liar John Dean [who served as Nixon’s White House counsel] and the fiction-writer [Bob] Woodward. May they suffer in eternity.”
这位共和党活动人士的说法荒谬至极，但数小时后，莫妮卡·克劳利 nonetheless 为其背书。她曾担任福克斯新闻台主持人，目前是特朗普政府的礼宾总管。克劳利在网上提及马特的推文时写道：“尼克松总统是深层国家骗局的目标。”“他将沉冤得雪。”几天后，J.D.万斯出现在加利福尼亚州的理查德·尼克松总统图书馆和博物馆，这位副总统在那里继续这场言辞上的政治攻击。
The Republican activist’s claims were ridiculous, but hours later they were nevertheless endorsed by Monica Crowley, a former Fox News personality who currently serves as the Trump administration’s chief of protocol. “President Nixon was the target of a Deep State hoax,”Crowley wrote online while referencing Martin’s tweet. “He will be vindicated.”Days later, JD Vance appeared at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in California, where the vice president kept the rhetorical campaign going.
在论证尼克松的历史遗产“正经历某种程度的复兴”后，这位来自俄亥俄州的共和党人说道：“正如我在后台开玩笑说……如果水门事件明天发生，那会是一条大约持续12小时的新闻。这种认为它会推翻一届总统政府的说法简直疯了。”
After arguing that Nixon’s legacy is “enjoying a bit of a renaissance,” the Ohio Republican said, “As I joked … backstage, if Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be, like, a 12-hour news story. The idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy.”
在同一番言论中，万斯看似认真地说：“如果你看看深层国家如何扳倒理查德·尼克松的故事，就会发现，这跟同一批人、同一批机构在第一届特朗普政府期间试图对唐纳德·特朗普做的事情并没有那么不同。”万斯的这番说辞存在各种问题，其中最简单的一点就是：认为尼克松是被密谋反对他的邪恶政府内部人员扳倒的，这种想法荒谬至极。毕竟，我们已经听过那些录音。尼克松选择参与系统性滥权行为。他的罪行是他自己的，不能归咎于“深层国家”，无论共和党人是否愿意承认现实。
As part of the same comments, Vance argued in apparent seriousness, “If you look at the story of how the deep state took down Richard Nixon, it’s not all that different from what the same groups of people, the same institutions, tried to do to Donald Trump in the first Trump administration.”There were all kinds of problems with Vance’s pitch, including the simple fact that it’s bonkers to think Nixon was brought down by nefarious government insiders who plotted against him. We have, after all, heard the tapes. Nixon chose to engage in systemic abuses. His crimes were his own, not the fault of “the deep state,” whether Republicans choose to acknowledge reality or not.
历史学家兼记者加雷特·格拉夫曾撰写一部有关水门事件的奠基性著作。他将万斯的言论评价为“令人震惊地”脱离历史，并称其“对水门事件是什么、又不是什么有着不成熟的理解”。
Historian and journalist Garrett Graff, who wrote one of the defining books about Watergate, described Vance’s comments as “shockingly” ahistorical and an “immature understanding of what Watergate was and wasn’t.”
尼克松图书馆前馆长蒂莫西·纳夫塔利不久后告诉《华盛顿邮报》，万斯“身为一名受过良好教育的律师，理应更明白这些”。纳夫塔利是哥伦比亚大学研究总统历史的学者，随后他提到了那些收录了数千小时尼克松在椭圆形办公室内谈话的录音。
Timothy Naftali, the former director of the Nixon Library, told The Washington Post soon after that Vance “should know better as a well-educated lawyer.”Naftali, a presidential historian at Columbia University, went on to refer to recordings that contain thousands of hours of Nixon’s Oval Office conversations.
“你可以在录音中听到他教唆他人作伪证。他在告诉中间人，应该对一个即将接受联邦调查局采访的人说些什么、不该说些什么，”这位历史学家解释道，“你还能听到有人向尼克松报告说，已经找到了资金，要雇用卡车司机工会的人去打断示威者的骨头。这些全是非法行为。”纳夫塔利在接受《邮报》采访时总结道：“这并不是什么党派立场不同导致的解读问题。证据铁证如山。”他还举出了更多尼克松企图破坏法律保障的例子。
“You can hear him suborn perjury on the tapes. He’s telling an intermediary what to tell someone who’s about to be interviewed by the FBI, what to say and what not to say,” the historian explained. “You can hear Nixon being told that money had been found to hire Teamsters to go and break the bones of demonstrators. That’s all illegal.”“It’s not as if it’s a matter of partisan interpretation. The evidence is overwhelming,” Naftali concluded during his interview with the Post while offering additional examples of Nixon’s efforts to subvert legal protections.
然而三个月后，特朗普领导的司法部仍准备重新审视，尼克松是否是某种检方滥权侵害的受害者——这些进展在半个世纪前看来简直难以想象。
Three months later, Trump’s Justice Department is nevertheless prepared to take a fresh look at whether Nixon was some kind of victim of prosecutorial abuse — developments that would’ve seemed unthinkable a half-century ago.
The post 数十年后，特朗普领导的司法部将审查尼克松在水门事件期间是否遭到不当对待 MS NOW
The post Decades later, Trump’s DOJ to review whether Nixon was mistreated during Watergate scandal MS NOW