Poll: Majority of Americans approve of Trump-Russia probe, nearly half think Trump committed a crime

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last updated 3 November 2017

A new Washington Post/ABC News poll released Thursday finds that 58 percent of Americans approve of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into possible collusion between President Trump's campaign and the Russian government, and 49 percent say they think it's likely Trump directly committed a crime in connection with Russian meddling in the election.

Political leanings influenced these responses — 78 percent of Democrats and 56 percent of independents approve of how Mueller is handling the investigation, compared with 38 percent of Republicans, while 82 percent of Republicans say it's unlikely Trump committed a crime, and 74 percent of Democrats and half of independents say it's likely.

Nearly 7 in 10 are in favor of Mueller filing charges against Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign chairman, and his deputy, Rick Gates, and 53 percent say those charges, as well as foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos' guilty plea for lying to the FBI, indicate broader wrongdoing by the Trump campaign; 28 percent think the wrongdoing is limited to this trio. The poll was conducted Oct. 30 through Nov. 1 among a random sample of 714 adults on phones, with a margin of sampling error of ± 4.5 percentage points.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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