More Americans say they have trust in special counsel Robert Mueller than President Trump when it comes to the investigation into Russia’s election meddling, according to a survey released Monday.
The USA Today poll — which surveyed 1,000 registered voters earlier this month after Mueller indicted 13 Russian nationals and three Russian groups over their alleged 2016 interference — found that 58 percent of voters have some or a lot of trust in Mueller’s investigation and 57 percent have little to no trust in Trump’s denials of Russian collusion.
Neither Trump nor Mueller got high favorable ratings, however, with Trump at 34 percent and Mueller at 37 percent.
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Nearly 70 percent of those polled said they believe Moscow made a serious effort to meddle in the 2016 elections but are fairly split on whether it had any effect on the outcome, with 44 percent saying it did not and 42 percent saying it did.
Three-fourths of respondents said the Kremlin will likely try to influence future American elections, and the same amount also said they take Mueller’s charges seriously. Only 20 percent said they do not view the charges as serious.
Some 60 percent said Trump is not doing enough to address the threat of future interference.
The survey aligns with one released earlier this month by Marist College, which found that, given a choice between the two, 55 percent of Americans would trust Mueller over Trump, compared to just 30 percent who said the opposite.
The threat to future elections has been considered credible enough that the State Department recently unveiled a $40 million initiative to combat state-sponsored disinformation targeting the U.S.
Trump has on numerous occasions attacked Mueller’s investigation and stated that there was no collusion between Moscow and his campaign.
The USA Today poll was done by landline and cellphone from Feb. 20-24 and has a margin of error of 3 percentage points.