A substantial majority of Americans, 65 percent, agree with the Republican position that Democrats should have opened the initial depositions in the partisan impeachment inquiry to the public, according to the results of a Washington Post-ABC News poll released Friday.
Only 33 percent think it is acceptable for the Democrats to have held the testimony provided by impeachment probe witnesses so far behind closed doors, and two percent have no opinion on the matter.
Republicans have lambasted the Democrats for refusing to hold public impeachment inquiry hearings and for not releasing the transcripts of the testimony provided so far. Seemingly responding to GOP pressure, Democrats say they will begin holding public hearings before Thanksgiving and begin releasing testimony transcripts by next week.
According to the poll, 50 percent disapprove of the way House Democrats have handled their impeachment inquiry, while 43 percent approve, and seven percent have no opinion.
House Democrats pursuing the probe are supposed to be trying to determine whether President Donald Trump abused his power by allegedly pressuring Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter in exchange for security assistance.
There are signs, however, that the Democrats are engaged in a fishing expedition that will go far beyond Ukraine.
A slim majority of Americans, 51 percent, are also not buying the claim that Democrats are conducting the inquiry to uphold their Constitutional duties. Those Americans agree with Republicans that House Democrats are leading the impeachment probe to hurt Trump politically.
Only 43 percent of respondents believe Democrats are mainly interested in upholding the Constitution, and five percent have no opinion on the issue.
Overall, the poll found that the impeachment probe has divided Americans along party lines with 49 percent in favor of removing Trump and 47 percent against it. While the vast majority (82 percent) of Republicans are against impeaching and removing Trump, most Democrats (82 percent ) are overwhelmingly in favor of it.
The poll, however, revealed that the number of independents who oppose the impeachment and removal of Trump, at 49 percent, exceeds those who are in favor (47 percent).
A majority of respondents (58 percent) also disapprove of the way Trump has responded to the impeachment inquiry, compared to 34 percent who approve and nine percent with no opinion.
The poll also shows that a majority of Americans (55 percent) believe the U.S. president “did something wrong” in his dealings with Ukraine, and 35 percent say he did not.
Democrats have so far been mostly leaking private testimony from impeachment probe witnesses that fuel their inquiry.
A majority of Americans (55 percent) also say Republicans’ defense of Trump stems from their desire to help Trump politically, while 36 percent said GOP lawmakers are mainly interested in upholding the Constitution.
Meanwhile, nearly six (58 percent) out of every ten respondents disapprove of Trump’s job performance.
While most (91 percent) Democrats disapprove of the president’s job performance, “Trump’s base of Republicans is less united in support, however, with 74 percent approving of his job performance, a record low in Post-ABC polls,” the Washington Post noted.
“The Post-ABC poll was conducted by telephone from Oct. 27-30 among a random national sample of 1,003 adults, 65 percent of whom were reached on cellphones and 35 percent on landlines. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points,” it added.
At the heart of the inquiry is an allegedly partisan “whistleblower’s” complaint accusing Trump of making a quid pro quo offer during a July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Trump leveraged U.S. aid on a promise by Ukraine to launch a corruption probe into the Bidens. Trump and Zelensky have denied the allegation that the “whistlelbower” made.
The partisan impeachment probe resolution, approved on stark partisan lines with two Democrats joining all Republicans in voting against it, is expected to open the hearings up to the public. It also grants House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA), the leader of the probe, more power over the release of transcripts, allowing him to release those edited unilaterally.
Although the resolution grants Schiff the authority to release the transcripts, it does not compel him to release those from past testimony. In other words, Schiff gets to decide which transcripts will be released and when.
Echoing a recent Breitbart News assessment, House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) suggested Thursday that the impeachment probe will likely interfere with the 2020 presidential elections.
Consistent with the belief of 51 percent of Americans, Scalise noted that Democrats are not interested in getting to the bottom of the allegations that triggered the impeachment effort.
Instead, their focus is solely on removing Trump from office and overturning the results of the 2016 elections, he said.