POLL: Most Americans would believe the FBI over Trump
- A Marist College poll found that 66% of people surveyed believe the FBI over President Donald Trump.
- A majority of respondents also said they believe special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russia's meddling in the 2016 election to be fair.
- The findings come amid Republicans' claims of corruption and bias against Trump at the FBI and the Justice Department.
A majority of Americans said they would believe the FBI more than President Donald Trump, according to a Marist College poll published Friday.
The survey found that 66% of 1,012 respondents said if Trump and the FBI disagree, they would believe the FBI. Only 24% said they would believe Trump.
A majority of respondents - 53% - also said they believe the special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russia's meddling the 2016 US election to be fair, while 28% believe it to be unfair. But views differed along party lines. While 77% of Democrats said they believe the investigation is fair, 46% of Republicans said it is unfair.
Republican lawmakers and Trump's allies have criticized the FBI and the Department of Justice in recent weeks for perceived corruption and bias against the president.
Last week, Trump authorized the release of a memo spearheaded by House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes, in which Republicans accuse the FBI and the DOJ of misleading the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to obtain a warrant that would allow them to secretly surveil Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser.
Then on Wednesday, Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley and Lindsey Graham released a declassified version of a January letter that doubled down on allegations in the Nunes memo and called on the DOJ to bring criminal charges against Christopher Steele, the author of a controversial dossier that Republicans say was deceptively used as the basis for the Page surveillance warrant.
Trump has repeatedly castigated the FBI for investigating alleged collusion between his presidential campaign and the Russian government. He has called Mueller's investigation a "witch hunt" and denied there was any collusion.
After the release of the Nunes memo, Trump said it "totally vindicates" him, but "the Russian Witch Hunt goes on and on."
"Their [sic] was no Collusion and there was no Obstruction (the word now used because, after one year of looking endlessly and finding NOTHING, collusion is dead)," Trump said in a tweet. "This is an American disgrace!"
Mueller's investigative team has said it is interested in interviewing Trump, but the president's lawyers are advising him against it to avoid risking contradicting himself under oath.
Most voters want Trump to do the interview. A Monmouth University poll released on February 3 found that 71% of respondents think Trump should agree to sit down with Mueller.
But Trump has wavered on what he will do. He at one point said he was "100%" open to it, but later walked that back, saying that because there was "no collusion," it would be "unlikely that you'd even have an interview."