A majority of Americans believe former President Trump is being treated differently than most criminal defendants in his hush money case, according to a new CNN poll.
Trump’s hush money trial began last Monday, marking the first criminal trial of a former American president. He has been charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records in relation to reimbursements to his attorney at the time, Michael Cohen, who paid an adult film actor $130,000 prior to the 2016 election to keep quiet about an alleged affair with Trump, which he denies.
Another recent poll from The Economist/YouGov found that 24 percent of surveyed Americans think the former president is going to be convicted of a crime in the hush money case, 36 percent said they don’t think the former president will be convicted and 39 percent said they weren’t sure.
The same poll found that 43 percent of surveyed Americans think Trump should be convicted of a crime in the case, 37 percent think he shouldn’t be and 20 percent are unsure.
Following the second day of jury selection in his trial, Trump referred to the reimbursements as a “legal expense,” putting some blame on his accountants.
“I was paying a lawyer, and we marked it down as a legal expense — some accountant. I didn’t know,” Trump told reporters. “Mark it down as a legal expense. That’s exactly what it was. And you get indicted over that?”
The CNN poll was conducted by SSRS between April 18 and 23, with a sample of 1,212 respondents and a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.