When it comes to whether Congress should continue to investigate President Donald Trump now that Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election has been delivered to Attorney General William Barr, slightly more say Congress should keep going rather than stop. Fifty-three percent say Congress should continue to investigate Trump’s ties with Russia, while 45% think Congress should stop.
Mueller delivered his report on March 22, 2019, bringing to a close a nearly two-year investigation into Trump’s campaign and Russian officials. Details from the report had not been released at the time of the survey.
Ever since Mueller was appointed special counsel in May 2017, views of the investigation have divided along partisan lines. And now that the investigation is over, 84% of Democrats say Congress should continue to look into Trump’s ties with Russia, while 84% of Republicans disagree.
The survey found that 58% of the public think Trump has tried to obstruct the investigation into whether his campaign had any connection to Russia, and 40% do not think he made an attempt to impede the investigation. If Trump had no inappropriate contacts with Russia but did obstruct the investigation, 53% think he should be removed from office, while 44% disagree.
In the wake of Barr’s letter to Congress about Mueller’s report, confidence in the investigation’s impartiality has increased. Forty percent are extremely or very confident, up from 32% in March. The increase has largely come from a rise in Republican confidence in the fairness of the investigation.
Barr is expected to release a redacted version of the Mueller report to Congress and the public on April 18. Ahead of this release, a majority of the public say the Justice Department has not released enough information about the report to Congress or the public. In comparison, only 34% say Trump has received too little information about the report.
Forty-four percent remain concerned about possible inappropriate contacts between Trump or his campaign and the Russian government. Regarding Trump’s ties with Russia, 35% say he has done something illegal, 34% say he has acted unethically, and 29% do not think the president has done anything wrong. These results are not significantly different from those found in the March poll, when 37% said the president has done something illegal, 32% said his actions are unethical, and 27% said he has done nothing wrong.
Thirty-nine percent approve of how Trump is handling his job as president, and 60% disapprove, not significantly different from his approval rating in March. The nationwide poll was conducted April 11-14, 2019, using the AmeriSpeak® Panel, the probability-based panel of NORC at the University of Chicago. Online and telephone interviews using landlines and cell phones were conducted with 1,108 adults. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.
