WASHINGTON — The first criminal trial facing former President Donald Trump is also the one in which Americans are least convinced he committed a crime, a new AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll finds.
Only about one-third of U.S. adults say Trump did something illegal in the hush money case for which jury selection began Monday, while close to half think he did something illegal in the other three criminal cases pending against him.
They’re fairly skeptical that Trump is getting a fair shake from the prosecutors in the case — or that the judge and jurors can be impartial in cases involving him.
Still, half of Americans would consider Trump unfit to serve as president if he is convicted of falsifying business documents to cover up hush money payments to a woman who said he had a sexual encounter with her.
While a New York jury will decide whether to convict Trump of felony charges, public opinion of the trial proceedings could hurt him politically. The poll suggests a conviction could hurt Trump’s campaign.
Trump enters a rematch with President Joe Biden as the first presumptive nominee of a major party — and the first former president — to be under indictment. A verdict is expected in about six weeks, well before the Republican National Convention, where he’ll accept the GOP nomination.
Trump has made the prosecutions against him a centerpiece of his campaign and claimed without evidence that Biden, a Democrat, engineered the cases. That argument helped him consolidate GOP support during the Republican primary, but a conviction might influence how many Americans — including independent voters and people long skeptical of Trump — perceive his candidacy.
“Any conviction should disqualify him,” said Callum Schlumpf, a 31-year-old engineering student and political independent from Clifton, Texas. “It sets a bad example to the rest of the world. I think it misrepresents us, as a country, as to what we believe is important and virtuous.”
