A plurality of Americans say former President Donald Trump did not break the law in the hush money case against him — making the indictment brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg the weakest in the court of public opinion.
According to the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll out Tuesday, just 35% say the 77-year-old Trump acted illegally to conceal payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election to keep her quiet about an alleged affair with the married real estate mogul.
The survey also found that 31% of Americans think Trump acted unethically but not illegally in the matter, while a further 14% said the 45th president did nothing wrong at all. Nearly one in five Americans (19%) said they didn’t know enough about the case to make a judgement.
Survey respondents were more confident in the three other pending cases against Trump, with 45% saying he acted illegally to remain in power following his loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 election and 47% believing he broke the law both to try and reverse the election outcome in Georgia and in keeping national security documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort after leaving office.
Trump faces 34 counts of falsifying business records to hide reimbursements he made to his then-attorney, Michael Cohen, for the $130,000 Cohen paid Daniels in 2016 to keep mum about her purported liaison with the then-candidate.
Trump has denied both legal wrongdoing and that he had an affair with Daniels.
The hush money case marks the first time a current or former US president has ever faced criminal charges.
Although public confidence in the handling of the Trump cases is low — with only 31% thinking prosecutors are treating the former president fairly — the presumptive GOP nominee still faces significant consequences if convicted.
Exactly half of Americans say they would not consider Trump fit to be president if he is found guilty in the hush money case, including 15% of Republicans and 47% of independents.
The Manhattan trial is also taking time away from Trump being out on the campaign trail ahead of what is likely to be a close election rematch against President Biden
“I should be right now in Pennsylvania and Florida, in many other states — North Carolina, Georgia — campaigning,” Trump said while walking into court Tuesday.
“This is all coming from the Biden White House because the guy can’t put two sentences together.”
The AP-NORC poll surveyed 1,204 Americans April 4-8 and has a margin of error of plus-or-minus 3.9 percentage points.