WASHINGTON (AP) – About half of Americans believe that former President Donald Trump should be charged with a crime for his role in the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, a new study shows.
A survey by the Associated Press’s NORC Center for Public Affairs found that 48% of adults in the United States say the former Republican president should be charged with a crime for his role, while 31% say he should not be charged . An additional 20% say they do not know enough to have an opinion. Fifty-eight percent say Trump has a big or big responsibility for what happened that day.
The poll came after five public hearings by a House of Representatives committee investigating Jan. 6, which sought to portray Trump’s potential criminal guilt in the events that led to the deadly uprising. But it was made ahead of Tuesday’s surprise hearing involving former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson. Her explosive testimony provided the most convincing evidence so far that the former president could be linked to a federal crime, experts say.
Trump’s views on criminal responsibility are predictably falling apart along party lines, with 86 percent of Democrats but only 10 percent of Republicans saying Trump should be charged with a crime. Among Republicans, 68 percent say he shouldn’t be blamed, and 21 percent say they don’t know. However, the fact that almost half of the country believes he should be tried is a remarkable position for the former president, pointing to the difficulties he may face if he runs for the White House again in 2024.
For Ella Mece, a South Carolina Democrat, Trump’s guilt was clear from the start when he called on his supporters to march to the Capitol on the morning of Jan. 6 and “fight like hell.”
“It was meant to provoke violence because he kept encouraging them,” the 86-year-old told the Associated Press. “As it happened, I watched everything and just thought, why doesn’t someone stop this?” Why doesn’t he stop that? ”
Chris Schlomer, an independent from Texas, agreed that Trump was responsible for irritating the crowd with his baseless allegations of election fraud. But the 61-year-old is not the only one to blame Trump.
Schlomer believes that Republicans in Congress also have something to do with what happened that day: “I feel that people were afraid of Donald Trump, especially Republican politicians, so they wouldn’t control him, and I think that just encouraged him.”
And he is not alone. Although views on Trump’s role have not changed since December, Americans are a little more inclined now than then to say that Republicans in Congress are largely responsible for the events of January 6.
Forty-six percent say now, just over 41 percent in December. An additional 21% say GOP lawmakers had some responsibility, and 30% say they are not responsible. The change in the case, according to which Republicans in Congress have a great responsibility, was caused mainly by Democrats and independents.
Ulysses Bryant, a Democrat from Florida, said that although he always believed that Trump and the rebels should be charged with a crime, he did not know about Republican participation in Congress until he began monitoring the hearings.
Nearly six in 10 Americans – 56% – say they followed the news of the congressional hearings. A smaller but still significant share – 42% – say they have watched or listened.
The nine-member commission, which includes seven Democrats and two Republicans, has been working around the clock for the past year to investigate the relationship between Trump and his allies and the violence and chaos that followed in the Capitol. The phase of the public hearing of their investigation aims to expose all this investigative work to the American public in an attempt to create a historical record of what happened.
Seventy-five percent of Democrats and 42 percent of Republicans say they followed the news of the hearings. More Democrats than Republicans also say they got involved, 58% vs. 27%. The first of the public hearings, which began in early June, received high ratings for television viewing, although subsequent hearings received more modest ratings.
Kathleen Keller, a retired investment banker from San Francisco, is one of the Republican voters who took part in the hearings and still believes that Trump is not responsible for the events of that day.
The 83-year-old believes the only people to be charged are those who brought weapons to the Capitol, or anyone who entered the building and caused damage inside. “Trump absolutely should not be accused of anything,” she told the AP.
Nevertheless, the committee plans to continue its investigation into Congress and present new evidence in the coming weeks to its numerous viewers, including the most important: Attorney General Merrick Garland. Despite public opinion about Trump’s likely criminal involvement, lawmakers continue to face harsh realities: while they can investigate Jan. 6 and issue summonses to gather information, only the Justice Department can bring criminal charges.
But in recent weeks, there have been clear signs that the Justice Department appears to be escalating an investigation into pro-Trump efforts to undo the 2020 presidential election. of pressure on then-Vice President Mike Pence to reject the results of the Electoral College.
Authorities last week searched the home of Jeffrey Clark in Virginia, who was known in the Department of Justice to defend Trump’s false allegations of election fraud. Agents also served summonses on Republican Party presidents in Arizona, Nevada and Georgia, three states that elected Democrat Joe Biden and where Trump’s allies created a list of “alternative voters” designed to undermine the vote. And Republicans in two other states – Michigan and Pennsylvania – have revealed that they have been interviewed by the FBI.
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The 1,053 adult survey was conducted June 23-27 using a sample from NORC’s Probability-Based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is intended to be representative of the U.S. population. The permissible sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4 percentage points.
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AP writer Hannah Fingerhutt contributed to this report.
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