A new Fox News poll shows a solid two-thirds majority of voters believe it was “inappropriate” for former president Donald Trump to have taken a stash of more than 11,000 documents belonging to the government at the end of his term in the White House.
The survey also found that just 26 per cent of US voters believe Mr Trump’s actions were “appropriate,” compared with the 65 per cent who said it was not.
Of the survey respondents who said they voted for Mr Trump, just 38 per cent said the ex-president acted inappropriately by taking the government-owned documents, while nearly half of that group — 46 per cent — said Mr Trump’s actions were appropriate.
Most groups of voters surveyed also said the Federal Bureau of Investigation acted appropriately when executing a court-authorised search of the ex-president’s Palm Beach, Florida home on 8 August. But the self-identified Trump voters said the FBI’s actions were inappropriate by a margin of 72 per cent to 21 per cent.
Most voters surveyed also said they have confidence in the FBI, with 30 per cent saying they have a great deal of confidence in the bureau and 41 per cent responding with some confidence in the law enforcement agency.
According to court documents, FBI agents found over 11,000 non-classified government documents spread across scores of boxes when they searched the twice-impeached ex-president’s home and office last month.
Agents also discovered more than 100 “unique documents with classification markings”, including three stored in Mr Trump’s desk. Classification levels ranged from confidential – the lowest level of classification in the US system – to the highest, top secret.
Currently, prosecutors are barred from using any of the recovered documents to further their criminal investigation into the ex-president because a federal judge who he appointed to the bench has ordered them to be reviewed for privilege by a third-party special master.
While the Fox News polling operation is widely respected by experts and journalists, this latest poll’s findings may come as a surprise to some of the network’s most prominent personalities.
Many of Fox News’ prime-time hosts have spent the weeks since the FBI’s search of Mr Trump’s home defending the ex-president and offering up conspiracy theories about federal agents’ misconduct.
As a result, federal officials have reported record numbers of threats against federal agents and other law enforcement personnel since Mr Trump first announced that his home had been searched.
Yet at the same time, other Fox personalities have pushed back on the idea that Mr Trump is blameless in the controversy that has swirled around his handling of classified documents.
The day after the search, Fox legal analyst and George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley said on air that the FBI had “every right” to retrieve classified documents from Mr Trump’s home. He added that the ex-president had “no right” to retain any of it.
