Most in new poll say Trump investigations are fair
A majority of Americans think that the slate of state and federal investigations into former President Trump are fair, according to a new poll, despite Republican attempts to frame the probes as a left wing witch hunt of the former president.
A 56 percent majority of respondents think the investigations into Trump are fair, according to a new NPR/PBS/Marist poll, with 41 percent of saying the inquiries are a “witch hunt.”
The split in opinion, largely along the partisan divide, comes after Trump said he expected to be arrested last week in connection with a Manhattan probe into the hush money payment made to Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election.
Although the former president has yet to be indicted in the investigation, he and his allies went on the offensive against Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, framing his investigation as a political attack designed to damage Trump as he again campaigns for president.
Trump’s allies in Congress have called on the prosecutor to testify about the hush money case, but Bragg has refused.
An overwhelming majority of Republicans in the survey, 80 percent, thought the investigations were a witch hunt. That is opposed to the 87 percent of Democrats and 51 percent of independents who thought the probes were fair.
The other investigations into Trump include the federal inquiry into his actions around the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riots and his handling of classified information, a Georgia investigation into his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the state, and a New York state civil lawsuit that alleges Trump and his business inflated the value of his real estate assets.
A plurality of respondents to the survey thought that Trump had done something improper. Forty-six percent of respondents believed the former president had done something illegal, while 29 percent thought he had done something unethical but not illegal. The poll surveyed 1,327 adults and had a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.