A slim majority of people in the United States think that the FBI acted honestly when it searched former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and found hundreds of secret papers.
However, a sizable portion of people believe it to be a component of the ‘witch hunt’ that Trump has been railing against since since the Russia investigation. Republicans as a whole also embrace the president’s argument.
The latest Wall Street Journal poll was released following an explosive Justice Department filing in which government lawyers described the vast amount of Top Secret materials that agents eventually acquired after a year of work, despite a letter from a Trump lawyer claiming that a “diligent search” had been made for government records.
Trump may be charged with removing and keeping information that is related to national security, according to several legal experts.
According to a recent study, the majority of Americans believe the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago was a legitimate inquiry.
Regarding the August 8 raid on the president’s West Palm Beach private club, there are significant party differences in the poll.
The search “was part of a legitimate and appropriate investigation to investigate if former President Trump was engaged in any wrongdoing,” according to a slim majority of 52% who agree with this statement. This search is basically just another law enforcement activity.
When confronted with the two conflicting claims, 41% of respondents felt it was only “another example of the ongoing witch hunt and harassment the Democrats and Biden administration continue to conduct against former President Trump.”
A “witch hunt” is what 40% of Americans believe the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago to be.
That is very much in keeping with the case Trump is advancing, even as he seems to accept at least some of what the government is attempting to prove: that he had official papers at his club more than a year after leaving office.
Since the search, Trump has constantly attacked the FBI, alleging that it is out to get him.
On Thursday, he was fuming about an image of highly classified documents FBI agents gathered for a photo that prosecutors released in response to his own court filing seeking a special master to sort through his executive privilege claims.
‘A lot of people think that when you walk into my office, I have confidential documents or whatever it may be – all declassified – but I had confidential documents spread out all over my floor. Like a slob,’ Trump said Thursday morning on the John Fredericks Radio Show.
‘Like I’m sitting there reading these documents all day long or somebody else would be.’
Trump called DOJ’s move ‘dishonest,’ because investigators ‘put them there in a messy fashion, and then they took a picture and they released it to the public.’
One of Trump’s lawyers, Alina Habba, said on Sean Hannity’s Fox program Wednesday night that Trump’s office isn’t messy – even as she revealed the president hosts people in the room where agents found government documents ‘frequently.’
‘I do have firsthand knowledge, as you know, I’m down there frequently,’ she told Hannity. ‘I have never seen that. I have never seen that. That is not the way his office looks. Anybody that knows President Trump’s office – he has guests frequently there – it’s, uh, just a joke.’