With former President Trump’s first criminal trial officially underway, most Americans don’t think he acted illegally in the hush money case, according to a recent survey.
The survey, published last week by The Associated Press / NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, found that 31 percent believe the former president’s actions were “unethical, but not illegal” and 14 percent say he did nothing wrong.
Just over a third of all respondents, 35 percent, believe Trump acted illegally in the case. The rest, roughly 19 percent, said they don’t know enough about the case to respond, per the survey.
Despite attempting to delay the trial past the November election, Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, made history Monday as the first former or current U.S. president to ever face a criminal trial.
The case alleges that Trump illegally falsified business records when reimbursing his former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, for paying adult film actress Stormy Daniels to cover up an alleged affair ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
Trump appeared in Manhattan court Monday, where unlike his past court proceedings, he will have to be present for each day of the trial.
Nearly 100 New Yorkers filled the courtroom for the first day of jury selection. More than half were dismissed after they said they could not be “fair and impartial” when it comes to the criminal proceedings against the former president.
The first day of trial concluded and is expected to pick back up Tuesday at 9:30 a.m. EDT.
The latest survey was conducted before the highly publicized trial began.
The AP-NORC poll also found that Americans believe Trump’s time in office, as well as President Biden’s, have hurt the country for different reasons.
It was conducted April 4-8 among 1,204 adults in the U.S., and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.9 percentage points at the 95 percent confidence level.
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