Mueller Report Should Be Made Public, Say Three Quarters Of Americans
Three-quarters of Americans think the entire Mueller Report should be made public, NPR News is reporting. And despite Republicans’ repeated claims to the contrary, only one-third of Americans believe the report actually clears the president of any wrongdoing.
Well before Mueller finished his final report about his months-long investigation into possible collusion between Russian agents and the Trump campaign, his boss, Attorney General William Barr, had broadly hinted that he would only release a summary of the report. That discretion falls well within his authority, as he has the power to release as much of or as little of any report that crosses his desk as he sees fit.
Even before the summary was released, the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives had passed a unanimous resolution (excluding four Republican “present” votes) urging Barr to release the full report. In the Senate, a similar vote was blocked before it could be voted on.
And indeed, days after Mueller submitted his report, Barr only released a summary of the special counsel’s findings.
According to a recently-released Maris poll, three-quarters of Americans agree with the House that the entire Mueller report should be released to the public. Further, says Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion, an equal number of Americans want both Mueller and Barr to testify before Congress.
“People clearly want to see more about the report. They want it released publicly, are eager to see the principals — Mueller and Barr — testify, because they want to see how the sausage was made. They want to see how we got to this point.”
NEW COVER STORY: How Robert Mueller crushed the Republican Party’s 'Dump Trump' crowd https://t.co/OrD7RPibRs pic.twitter.com/is19MmjZOs
— Newsweek (@Newsweek) March 28, 2019
The notion that Barr should release the full report even has the support of a majority of Republican respondents — 54 percent — as opposed to just 18 percent who think that the summary released by Barr is sufficient. By contrast, just 5 percent of poll respondents who self-identified as Democrats support allowing the summary to be all that the public sees of the report, while 76 percent believe the full report should be released.
Meanwhile, the notion that the report — or at least, as much of it that Congress and the general public have been allowed to see — fully exonerates the president is falling on deaf ears with much of the American public. Trump, his Republican allies in Congress, and conservative media were quick to claim that the report clears Trump of any wrongdoing, but voters aren’t so sure, according to the new poll. Specifically, 56 percent of poll respondents say that questions remain about Trump’s innocence, while only a third — 36 percent — say the report fully clears Trump.
