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A lawyer for Columbus Nova wrote in a statement May 8
哥伦布诺瓦的一名律师在5月8日的一份声明中写道，
that the firm’s payment to Essential Consultants had no connection to Vekselberg.
该公司支付给必要咨询的费用和维克塞尔伯格无关。
THE WHITE HOUSE brushes off the Avenatti allegations.
白宫没有理睬阿文纳蒂的指控。
“This is yet another irrelevant thing that is made into a big thing,” Giuliani told TIME.
朱利安尼在接受本刊采访时表示：“又是一件被炒得沸沸扬扬却跟当前的问题毫不相干的事。”
Avenatti, for his part, says more is coming.
阿文纳蒂责表示，还有更多猛料等着特朗普。
“We’ve only begun to scratch the surface relating to the information we have,” he tells TIME.
他在接受本刊采访时表示：“这只是小打小闹，我们手里的信息还多得是。”
“We have a whole host of additional information relating to Essential Consultants.”
“我们还有大量关于必要咨询的其他信息。”
That’s bad news for Trump.
这对特朗普来说无疑是个坏消息。
“There’s certainly a corruption angle here,” says former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti,
“这里面肯定有腐败问题，”前联邦检察官雷纳托·马里奥蒂说，
noting that it is not clear what Cohen was being paid to do.
他又指出，那些钱是为了让科恩做什么，目前还不清楚。
“He doesn’t appear to have any set of skills that can answer (that).”
“他似乎没有任何能回答这一问题的有关技能。”
The disclosures make clear that the Justice Department’s investigations
那些爆料清楚地表明，司法部的调查
are in fact expanding and accelerating into territory Trump has previously said the lawmen have no business looking at.
已经向特朗普之前说司法人员无需过问的领域加速扩张了。
Experts were quick to place the range of possible legal liabilities from negligible to catastrophic:
专家们很快就把特朗普可能的法律责任的范围从微不足道扩大到了灾难性的程度：
possible lines of inquiry include bank fraud, campaign-finance or Lobbying Disclosure Act violations, and even bribery.
可能的调查范围扩大到了银行欺诈、违反竞选融资规定或《游说公开法》，甚至是行贿方面。
“If the money passed through a shell to Trump,” wrote Harvard law professor Noah Feldman in Bloomberg,
“如果那笔钱是通过一家空壳公司过手给特朗普的，”哈佛大学法学教授诺亚·费尔德曼在彭博社的新闻中写道，
“it will look as if Trump’s fixer set up a shell company to accept bribes on the President’s behalf.”
“就会给人一种负责给特朗普摆平各种问题的迈克尔·科恩成立了一家空壳公司，代总统受贿的印象。”
Trump campaigned against Washington corruption,
特朗普竞选的时候曾拿政府搞腐败做文章，
and the work of Cohen’s company may be a particularly stark example of it:
科恩这家公司的运作或许恰好就是政府腐败的一个特别鲜明的例子，
money flowing in from foreign interests and big corporations with business before the President,
资金从总统上任之前就已经存在的外国利益集团和大公司流入了必要咨询，
producing undisclosed results on the other side.
给另一端带来某些尚未披露的结果。
Which means that when it comes to questionable behavior by Trump and his allies,
这就意味着，当涉及到特朗普及其盟友的可疑行为时，
the President is no longer liable just to the traditional square-jawed work of Justice Department prosecutors,
总统就不仅仅只需要面对司法部检察官一贯的那种刚性的调查工作了，
but also to the slash-and-burn tactics he himself rose to power employing.
还要面对他自己在攫取权利时运用的大动干戈策略。
Avenatti is the first to acknowledge he is turning Trump’s playbook against him.
阿文纳蒂是第一个承认对特朗普以其人之道还治其人之身的人。
The California lawyer says that back when he was in college at the University of Pennsylvania,
这位加州律师说，他在宾夕法尼亚大学读书时有一门课，
he took a class where Trump’s longtime hard-knuckled political adviser Roger Stone made a memorable guest appearance.
长期以来一直很强硬的特朗普政治顾问罗杰·斯通曾作为嘉宾出现过，还给学生们留下了令人难忘的印象。
“You could say that Roger Stone taught me a lot of the skills I’m using today,” Avenatti says wryly.
“可以这么说，我今天用的很多手段都是从罗杰·斯通那里学来的，”阿文纳蒂挖苦地说。
Whether that ends up being more damaging to Trump than the traditional legal investigation remains to be seen,
他的指控是否会给特朗普造成比比司法部传统的调查更大的伤害，这一点还有待观察，
but it’s clear now that the President faces a whole new kind of fight.
但很明显，总统正面临着一场全新的战斗。
译文由可可原创，仅供学习交流使用，未经许可请勿转载。
