As President Donald Trump’s norm-busting legal retribution campaign against his perceived political foes continues, Americans seem to be seeing it for what it is.
Motions are being filed in former FBI Director James Comey’s case. On Friday, New York Attorney General Letitia James is due to be arraigned in Virginia.
And CNN reported Thursday that Ed Martin, one of the most polarizing Trump Justice Department officials, has been pushing for the investigation into Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff’s alleged mortgage fraud to lead to an indictment, despite prosecutors from the Maryland US Attorney’s Office being hesitant to proceed with charges.
Trump declined to weigh in on a possible Schiff indictment on Thursday, saying, “I hope it’s true, but I don’t know anything.”
As the administration has targeted the president’s enemies, the big question has been whether Americans would see it as just some political tit-for-tat equivalent to the indictments of Trump, or whether they’d recognize it as an extraordinary weaponization of the justice system.
The early verdict is in.
Americans seem to see charges the Trump administration has brought against its enemies as significantly less serious and significantly more politicized than the indictments of Trump.
A Quinnipiac University poll this week showed voters agreed 52%-38% that Trump was “using the U.S. Justice Department to file unjustified criminal charges against his political opponents.”
Independents agreed with that sentiment by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, 58%-31%.
A Reuters-Ipsos poll, meanwhile, showed Americans said 55%-26% that Trump was using federal law enforcement to go after his enemies. Even 29% of Republicans agreed with this.
(The question, unlike the Quinnipiac poll, didn’t ask people to judge the legitimacy of the charges.)
The polls would seem to be in line with a late September survey from the Pew Research Center.
That poll was conducted shortly after Trump removed a US attorney who resisted bringing charges against James and issued a public call for Attorney General Pam Bondi to bring them against Comey and James. Comey’s indictment landed soon after, which fell in the middle of the poll’s survey period.
Pew showed 62% of Americans agreed Trump was at least “probably” improperly encouraging federal investigations of his political opponents. Even 40% of Republican-leaning Americans said Trump was probably doing this.
These are pretty striking numbers that suggest a potential political problem for Trump, even as he moves forward.
And perhaps most notably, the numbers suggest Americans see the situation as quite different from Trump’s indictments.
The president baselessly accused then-President Joe Biden and a “weaponized” Justice Department of being behind the charges against him. (In fact, there is much more to tie Trump to orchestrating the Comey and James indictments.)
Analysts have generally regarded the recent classified documents charges against a third Trump foe, former national security adviser John Bolton, as being more substantial. The case originated in the Biden administration, and Trump didn’t publicly push it like he did the James and Comey cases – or fire a prosecutor.
But Americans seem to see the charges against Trump as simply more serious than the overall charges his administration has brought against his enemies.
While just 38% of voters in the Quinnipiac poll said the charges against Trump’s opponents were justified, Americans generally said by clear, double-digit margins that the cases against Trump were legitimate – and even that he was guilty. (Trump pleaded not guilty in all cases against him.)
Americans said 56%-41% that the investigations against Trump were “fair” rather than a “witch hunt,” according to a March 2023 Marist College poll conducted shortly before his first indictment.
And they said 47%-31% that the charges owed to Trump’s own actions, rather than an “abuse of the justice system,” according to an August 2023 CNN poll.
Americans said 57%-41% that the Justice Department was holding Trump accountable like anyone else, rather than that DOJ was “unfairly targeting Trump for political reasons,” according to a December 2023 Washington Post-University of Maryland poll.
And they said 58%-37% that there was “credible evidence” that Trump committed serious federal crimes, according to an August 2023 Public Religion Research Institute poll.
Near-majorities of Americans saw political motivations in many of the cases. And even more saw that in the Manhattan hush money case in which Trump was eventually convicted.
But that didn’t mean Americans saw those cases as illegitimate “witch hunts” or “hoaxes,” as Trump claims they were.
Indeed, Americans seem much more inclined to believe that about the cases Trump is orchestrating against his foes.
Source: edition.cnn.com