A new poll from Quinnipiac University released Tuesday shows that a decisive majority of the country believes President Donald Trump committed crimes before entering office.
According to the poll, 64 percent of Americans said that he committed crimes prior to becoming president. Only 24 percent of people were willing to say they disagreed with this assertion.
This means even a large portion of Trump's base of support — the 42 percent or so of the country that say they approve of his presidency — aren't confident he's innocent. The poll found that even 33 percent of Republicans who were surveyed think Trump committed crimes before his election.
When it comes to the question of whether Trump committed crimes while in office, the country is more evenly split. Quinnipiac found that only 45 percent of the country think he has committed crimes while in office, while 43 percent say he hasn't (a view which presumably correlates strongly with his approval rating.)
This picture is somewhat out of joint with the known facts. The best evidence we have that Trump committed a crime comes from Michael Cohen, the president's former attorney, and the federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York. Cohen has already pleaded guilty to coordinating criminal hush money payments to help Trump's campaign ahead of the 2016 election, a crime which he said he carried out at Trump's direction. SDNY allowed Cohen to make these claims in open court, suggesting prosecutors believe these claims are credible. And when Cohen testified before Congress last week, he provided a check he said he received from Trump after the 2017 inauguration, fraudulently designated as a legal retainer fee, that was, in fact, reimbursement for one of these criminal payments. This claim is all the more believable because Trump's attorney Rudy Giuliani has admitted Trump repaid Cohen for the payment.
So the crime for which we have the most evidence Trump committed actually extends from the period before he was elected into the beginning of his term. It's not too surprising, though, that the American public wouldn't necessarily have detailed understanding of the allegations against Trump.
And when people say they believe Trump committed crimes before entering office, they could be referring to many different types of crimes. For example, Trump is on tape admitting to sexual assault. Many have argued that there is evidence Trump helped launder money for Russians. He's been implicated in criminal fraud. The list of allegations goes on and on, and perhaps many Americans have concluded, without knowing too much of the specifics, that with all this smoke there must be some fire.
There's also substantial evidence that Trump has committed crimes in office too, of course. The most prominent example is obstruction of justice, of which there are countless examples. Some of it has occurred out in the open, like his attempt to intimidate Cohen out of testifying — which only raises the prospect that even more damning behavior is happening behind closed doors.
And with Democrats newly empowered in the House of Representatives and already launching sweeping probes of Trump and his administration's conduct, oversight may well uncover more damaging evidence. Trump and his allies are already trying to spin these investigations as congressional overreach, but as the new polling shows, much of the American populace is already primed to believe Trump is a crook. All the investigators have to do is prove it.