The Trump Investigations And What Americans Think About Them 01:03:16

I have a conundrum that I need help solving. Okay. I got groceries delivered last night. I ordered one carton of eggs, and they delivered three cartons of eggs. Granted, I also already had like a half carton of eggs in the refrigerator, so I actually have like 42 eggs. In my small studio apartment where only I live. What if you just brought...

the eggs to the office and everybody goes home with like six eggs that day. Yeah, possible calamity on the subway home. Who knows?

Hello and welcome to the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Druk. What happens when a former president is facing all kinds of legal liability on the federal and local level, but is also still the de facto leader of the party who's considering another run for the White House? Well, we're about to find out. The events of the past month have thrown the complexities of that question into high relief.

At the end of July, The Washington Post reported that former President Trump's actions were part of the Department of Justice's investigation into January 6th. Then, two weeks ago, seemingly unrelated, the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago and the search warrant released a week later outlined how Trump had taken top-secret documents from the White House.

There have also been new developments in local investigations. Last week, Trump's former lawyer Rudy Giuliani testified before a grand jury in the Fulton County, Georgia investigation into attempts to disrupt the state's 2020 election results.

The district attorney there also subpoenaed Senator Lindsey Graham in July, but he's seeking to avoid testifying. Also last week, former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg pled guilty to tax fraud and said he would testify against the Trump Organization in New York Attorney General Letitia James' ongoing investigation into Trump's business.

Today, we're going to look at all these investigations, including what we know about Trump's potential legal liability and how the public is reacting. We're also going to ask when and why Americans changed their minds on political issues and give a quick preview of Tuesday's primaries, most notably in New York.

Here with me to discuss all of it is politics editor Sarah Frostenson. Hello, Sarah. Hi, Galen. Hey, y'all. Also here with us is elections analyst Nathaniel Rakich. Hey, Nathaniel. Hey, Galen. And tech and politics reporter Kaylee Rogers. Hey, Kaylee. Hey, Galen. Hey, everyone.

So as you all heard from the rundown of the latest on investigations surrounding Trump or Trump's activities, we got a lot to cover today. So we're just going to dive right in and we're going to begin with our good use or bad use of polling example. Sometimes it seems like public opinion is hopelessly divided on an issue, while other times it feels like it can change practically overnight.

We can track these trends, and we do on this podcast, but it might be a bit harder to get to the root of why Americans change their mind on different policy positions. In a new poll, YouGov attempts to figure that out. First, they found that 78% of Americans say they've changed their mind on one or more political issues over the course of their lives.

Of the 11 policy areas YouGov polled, the issue most Americans have changed their position on is foreign policy at 42%. That was closely followed by drug policy and then healthcare. The lowest of the 11 policy issues was free speech, with only 17% of survey respondents having changed their mind on that issue. Liberals were more likely than conservatives to say that they have changed their mind on policy issues.

Finally, they also tried to figure out why Americans have changed their minds on different issues. So on issues like foreign policy, gun control, and climate change, changing world events were the most commonly cited. On issues like abortion and same-sex marriage, new insights and maturity were most common.

There's a lot to dig into this poll. It's really interesting. I mean, maybe the answer to the question of why Americans change their mind and how good this poll is at answering that question could be two separate things. But let's start off with the basics as usual. Kayleigh, is this a good or bad use of polling? I think this is a great use of polling. I was so...

intrigued by the findings. I really liked their methodology behind it. I think it's a really difficult question to pull on, but YouGov did a really solid job trying to, you know, tackle those issues. And I think it's important to pull on. Yeah, I was delighted by this. I spent way too long kind of digging into it and considering all the different facets of the findings. Okay, so specifically, why do you think they did a great job here?

Well, one of the things they did is they started off with an initial survey where they asked respondents to tell them a story. Like, is there a time in your life where you changed your opinion on a political issue? And just let them say whatever they said. And then they went through those responses and were able to kind of break them down into different categories, which is how they came up with the issues and the sort of reasoning behind why they changed their minds.

And then they took that and went back out and surveyed people and had them see if, you know, do any of these strike a chord with you? Have you had this experience with

these particular issues, have you changed your mind? And what were the reasons out of these reasons that we've already seen are really common among people? And that kind of categorization is similar to what we as journalists do. So I think maybe that's what appealed to me about it. We collect data and then we kind of try to categorize it and break it down in a way that makes sense and that we can pull conclusions from. We do that with information that we're collecting ahead of the midterms, for example, and it's a helpful way to contextualize

experiences that can be hard to codify, you know, like telling you someone a story about a time in your life where you had an opinion about something and then something happened and you changed your opinion. Like that's really difficult to put into a box and turn into a survey question. And I think YouGov did a valiant effort to try to do that. I do still have questions on what the trends actually mean. Like they've categorized it and we can see the percentages, but

The conclusions to me are still a little unclear, which I want to get into. But first, Sarah, good or bad use of polling? Well, you know, in the spirit of Nate, because what is a podcast without disagreement? I'm going to say bad. I agree with Kaylee that I thought that the approach here was very novel. I like that they asked respondents first what the top issues were and then derived their list. Like, that's a great practice.

That said, I didn't find the poll terribly insightful and wasn't sure what it told me versus tracing these issues over time. For instance, we already knew that there had been a huge shift in same-sex marriage through other types of polls. Gallup's polled on this issue since the early 90s.

And take something like foreign policy. That was the top issue in which voters changed their stance. But how did they change their stance? It's said that they became more conservative, but what does that actually mean? And this poll didn't really answer that for me in giving kind of a deep dive on, okay, Americans are changing their views on foreign policy. That means they're less likely to support interventions abroad or want to be more isolationist. I don't know that from this poll.

Okay. All right. We're going to keep digging into that. Nathaniel, where did you come down on this? Yeah, I thought it was a pretty good use of polling. Sarah, what I would answer to that is that I think it did start to get at some of those, you know, how and why questions, you know, for example, it asked.

It kind of presented a menu, kind of what Kaylee was alluding to, about why, you know, ask people why they changed their mind on a given issue. And it included things like insights you've gained about the world as you've matured or events occurring in the world that have caused you to rethink the issue or commentary you've consumed.

or conversations you've had with other people or personal experiences. And those did kind of vary by issue. So like people who, um, said they changed their mind on healthcare, uh, were more, most likely to say that personal experience had changed their mind. Um, whereas same sex marriage, people were most likely to say it was insights they had gained as they had matured. So, so I thought that was interesting. I take your point, Sarah, about the, um,

You know, foreign policy in particular is not an issue that can be put on a left-right spectrum like some of these other ones. But they also said, like on same-sex marriage, people tended to get more liberal. And I think everybody knows what that means. My one quibble with the poll would be that people tend to have a bad relationship

kind of memory of their past selves. Like you see this sometimes in polls where literally they'll ask like, who did you vote for in the 2020 election or in the 2016 election? And people will misremember who they voted for. There's like a bias toward the winner in that kind of question. So you could imagine a situation where people may have

said no i've always you know held the views that i have today even if maybe they haven't uh and they did change their mind about something but that said even you know in the poll they found that 78 percent of people said that they've changed their minds on at least one issue so um clearly you know the finding you know even if you take that as a floor and maybe even more people have changed their mind it show it does show you that a lot of people have changed their minds on an issue and you know that is kind of a useful reminder in uh you know

as you mentioned Galen in this polarized age that opinions can change. Sometimes it does take multiple decades such as on same sex marriage or marijuana

And sometimes opinions don't change like on abortion. But but yeah, it's a useful reminder. So do we feel like this poll is telling us more about times when conservatives take on a liberal position or liberals take on a conservative position? Or is it about liberals taking on a more liberal position and conservatives taking on a more conservative opinion? Because it seemed to me more like it was the latter than the former.

That's the case. I mean, they break that down with do they usually become more liberal or more conservative? And this is according to the respondents, how they felt.

their sort of view change went. And it was, it was a mix. I mean, for a lot of them, it was becoming more liberal. Um, but for free speech, immigration and foreign policy, they were more likely to say that their views became more conservative. Um, and whether that's already conservative people becoming even more conservative or liberals crossing the line, that's a little harder to, to break down just from what we have available. But it's not,

obviously always going in one direction, which is also interesting to me. Right. And I think that was a missed opportunity, though, is to that point, we don't know. Like, for instance, we know that we have seen issues like

same-sex marriage, you know, moderates getting more liberal on that, but we don't know with granularity how Democrats have shifted on each. Like, have they actually gotten more conservative on immigration? That wasn't necessarily obvious to me on that front. And one thing, too, that was really interesting is separately,

You know, a story that FiveThirtyEight contributor Michael Tesler did for the site recently on abortion was showing that in the wake of Dobbs, Republicans, to some extent, have still shifted towards a more liberal view on that. But you wouldn't see that captured in this poll. It's just this idea that, you know, most Americans have shifted towards it, but without a breakdown for what Democrats are thinking about it versus Republicans.

I want to drill down on immigration because that was the thing that most confused me. Looking at outside polling from Pew or Gallup, over time, what we really see in the partisan breakdown is that views on immigration used to be very similar. Throughout the 90s, Republicans and Democrats were both quite skeptical of immigration, saw risks as well as rewards, and had both parties had a complicated relationship to the issue.

Over time, we've seen that Republicans have remained relatively where they are, where they were on immigration, while Democrats and liberals have become significantly more liberal on immigration, more emphasizing the positives, wanting to increase levels of immigration. So actually, the change has come more from liberals. And as a result, in aggregated data terms, the country overall has become more liberal, quote unquote, on immigration because most of the movement has

been amongst Democrats. You might not get that sense from the rhetoric coming out of the Republican Party, which is sort of the loudest voice on the issue and is more conservative on the issue, obviously. But when you just aggregate all the data, that's what you get. But when you look at this poll, it says that in aggregate, the country has become more conservative on immigration than

That is in conflict with the Pew data and the Gallup data that we see elsewhere. So how do we make sense of that? I don't know that they're saying the country has become more conservative. They're saying among these people who said that they've shifted their views on immigration, more people said that their views became more conservative than people said they became more liberal. And again, maybe this is highlighting some of the flaws with this survey, but it's

That sort of depends on the individual's interpretation, right? You could have been liberal on immigration and now you're super liberal on immigration and you don't think that you've really changed your view on that topic in a way. Whereas you might, on the other side, have been kind of moderate on immigration and now feel very strongly conservatively and feel like that's more of a shift. Even if like, you know, we had degrees and they're kind of moving in the same amount.

Do you guys agree? I guess to me that is a downside of this poll is that that area gets pretty murky. I'll concede there.

No, I think that area is murky. Foreign policy struck me as having the same problems. You know, the poll found that liberals were the most likely to have changed their minds on it. But then when you look at how people have changed their minds, like more or now more conservative, like what is the more conservative stance on foreign policy that works with someone who identifies as very liberal? Like some of the...

Some of the definitions I think that they're operating for shifts in these policies aren't clear. And we also don't really know where the movement is happening, which I think makes it hard to kind of unpack some deeper findings there. Yeah, I think my defense of that is that this is kind of a starting point. Like, it's hard to cover everything in one single poll. And, you know, this is raising interesting questions and I think made a lot of us curious. It's capturing something.

you know, there's more work to be done. So at the very least, this poll got us thinking, as you said, Kaylee, we have a great use of polling, a bad use of polling, and a decent use of polling, I think is what I derived from what Nathaniel said. Put this poll aside for a second, because we do actually have empirical data about

when and why Americans sometimes change their minds beyond this. What can we point to as periods of time in American history where we see clear public opinion shifts that we can attribute to historical events?

Right. I mean, I think part of what intrigued me about this polling so much is I spend a lot of time thinking about disinformation in particular and conspiracy theories. This is part of what I cover in my beat. And so how do we change people's minds on those issues where there actually is a wrong stance, which is the untrue belief, as opposed to a political stance where it's just a matter of opinion?

And some of what I've learned from that is a couple things. One, that people really do, especially as we become more partisan, take cues from the political party and their leaders. So if there's a partisan stance on an issue, that can shift people's opinion, even if personally they may have fallen somewhere else.

We've also found that, you know, like facts aren't necessarily enough to sway people's views, at least with this disinformation thing. And people will end up reverting back to beliefs they previously held. So I did a story about looking back at the birther movement and kind of comparing it to beliefs that the election was stolen. If you look at people who believe that President Obama wasn't born in the United States,

The percent of people who believe that never really changes. It dips a bit when something happens. So when he released his birth certificate, the people who believe that dipped a bit, but then they bounced back. There is a growing body of political science research that gets at this idea that increasingly how our political leaders and what party we're affiliated with, what stances they take on issues will shape our underlying assumptions about those issues. We saw that in the 2016 election.

both among Trump supporters on things like immigration and racism, but also among Clinton supporters in terms of, you know, support for BLM or support for, you know, racial discrimination being present in the U.S. And increasingly, I think issues are, you know,

There's a clear line where the two parties stand on. And maybe that's why foreign policy is something that, you know, there was more shifts on is like the two parties, historically speaking anyway, have kind of been very similar and hawkish on it. I think that's changing a bit in this, you know, Trump era where it's this America first mentality. And so maybe there's more variations there.

But increasingly partisan identity is how people change and form their opinions. Though, you know, as Nathaniel was saying earlier, this poll found two other facts that I think are backed up in research as well, which, you know, changing events also will have an impact on how people think about something. I think gun violence is a great example of how, you know, people have become more cognizant of that issue, particularly in light of mass shootings.

And then people change their mind on personal experiences they have. And that in this poll they cited around health care in particular. Yeah, I mean, maybe to your point about the way that partisanship plays a role here is that we see, you know, for example, around the 2016 election, we saw changing views of Russia, which, you know, Democrats became a lot more negative on Russia and Republicans became more positive because it played a role in our domestic partisan politics.

I think to the same end, we've seen trust in institutions and support for things like the FBI, which we're going to get to change, you know, as the partisan implications of support for that institution have evolved. But I do think on a more macro level, if we get outside of the partisanship, it's probably things like war, you know, the tradition, like war, famine, economy, things like that, that truly evolve.

public opinion in a dramatic way. I don't know how any of these things describe what happened with something like same-sex marriage, but I'd be curious if you have thoughts. Well, again, I mean, Sarah mentioned personal experience and we've seen how much of an effect that can have that it can maybe even overcome sometimes these partisan impacts on people's viewpoints. And with same-sex marriage, for example, like,

As things started to shift and as gay and queer people were more comfortable living their lives out and telling people about who they are, more people suddenly were interacting with members of the LGBTQ community and realizing that they're their neighbors and their friends and their family members. And that could help. I can cite at least one survey, or sorry, one review that helped shift those opinions. And again, to go to healthcare, as you get older,

start having more challenging health issues and are dealing with the healthcare system in the United States that could shift your view of what you think needs to change or how you think it ought to be run.

Same-sex marriage, I think it's similar to marijuana legalization. Those are two issues that come to mind that we've seen just such a rapid shift in opinion that I don't know if it's easily explainable because the reverse for abortion, at least prior to the Supreme Court overturning Roe, was true in that public opinion didn't really shift on that.

That is something Americans have long been divided on. Yes, more Americans than not think abortion should be legal, but that doesn't mean they think it should be legal in all circumstances. We are seeing shifts on that now as it becomes increasingly a partisan issue. It was obviously a partisan issue before Roe being overturned, and I don't mean to imply that it wasn't, but I'm not sure it was as motivating for Democrats as it has historically been for Republicans.

So I think to the point Kaylee's making, it'll be interesting to see whether as we see more stories about women who are being affected by abortion being outlawed, oftentimes in circumstances that I think people didn't fully anticipate, you know, does that shift public opinion to something where we saw, you know, rapid acceptance of same-sex marriage or rapid desire for legalization of marijuana? Yeah.

All right, we will see. Let's move on to Trump's legal liability and how the public is reacting.

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I mentioned four areas at the top of the show pertaining to Trump's legal liability. The FBI retrieval of documents from Mar-a-Lago, the DOJ investigation into January 6th, the Fulton County, Georgia investigation into attempts to disrupt the 2020 election, and the New York investigation into the Trump organization's business practices.

I will admit that I was on vacation for some of these new developments. I seem to have a habit of being on vacation when important news breaks. So I will ask first and foremost, did I miss anything here? Are there any other important developments in legal issues surrounding Trump that I have not mentioned?

I think the most recent part of the story that perhaps you missed was the debate over whether or not to release the affidavit for the search warrant that was executed at Mar-a-Lago. So the same judge that unsealed the search warrant has said that he thinks parts of the affidavit could be unsealed.

and parts of them would be redacted. And he's going to examine proposed redactions from the Department of Justice and decide whether or not to actually release it. So he's kind of open to the idea of releasing this affidavit, which would have much more information about the investigation and what kind of prompted their desire to seek a search warrant. And this is something that Trump has said that he wants released. Many Trump supporters have said they want it released. Interestingly, also people on the left want it released.

You know, the sort of different motivations happening there, whether or not it actually is going to come out or if it's going to come out and just be a wall of like sharpied out, blacked out text is still something that we're waiting to learn. But that's sort of the latest installment of that investigation. And what are, Kaylee, the biggest questions remaining as pertains to the information in that affidavit?

I mean, we know what they were looking for from the search warrant that was released. We know what was found because that was shared as well. To an extent, I mean, it was sort of...

Literally, some of the documents were called miscellaneous top secret documents or something like that. So we don't know the details of every single thing that was found. But presumably the F-David is going to have more information that's going to explain what the investigation found that led them to believe that there were classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. Possibly how much Trump himself was involved in choosing to take those documents and store them there.

how much he understood about whether they were classified or not. So there are still some questions as far as culpability of the former president.

Okay, we're going to break this down into sort of three buckets here as we move through these investigations. Kayleigh, you have been tracking kind of the latest news on the context here as part of your beat. Sarah, you are tracking Trump's legal liability. Nathaniel, your kind of beat as far as these investigations go is public opinion. Okay, so Kayleigh, thank you for providing that context. I did miss some of that. Sarah, what are the legal issues going on here specific to the Mar-a-Lago search?

Right. So we know from what has been released that the Justice Department is investigating Trump for three potential violations of criminal statutes, including one of the Espionage Act.

which that encompasses crimes beyond spying. It's more so about the refusal to return national security documents upon request. And as Kayleigh was saying, we now know that there are 21 boxes taken, so we know Trump falls into that category. There is also a question of destruction or removal of records that could lead to a charge and obstruction of justice for violating the Espionage Act.

So to be clear, though, he has not been charged at this point. And one thing I thought was really interesting, Business Insider had this pretty thorough walkthrough of like all the different possible scenarios here for the range of legal woes facing Trump and what that could mean for 2024.

And they made a comparison to what happened to Giuliani last year where the FBI raided his home and they seized more than a dozen of his electronic devices as part of a criminal investigation into whether he broke foreign lobbying law.

And so earlier this month, though, they returned his devices and the New York Times reported that he is unlikely to face criminal charges related to his work in Ukraine. That is very much a real possibility here. We don't know that that's where this is headed, but I thought that was an interesting comparison point as we wait to see what the Department of Justice's next actions are. So now the politics part. Nathaniel, what does...

the public think about what is going on here other than a poll of one confusion, a little bit of confusion and opaqueness. Indeed. So Americans...

Think it would be a problem if Donald Trump took classified material with him to Mar-a-Lago, according to a YouGov poll that was conducted, I think, the day of or the day after the search. 45% said it would be a very big problem, and another 17% said it would be somewhat of a problem. Only 11% thought it would be not a very big problem, and only 13% thought it would be not a problem at all.

Of course, in that YouGov poll, things were pretty polarized by party. Democrats tended to think it would be a very big problem to take classified material with him, and Republicans tended to think it wasn't a problem, but they were a little squishy on it. But on other questions that were asked by a different poll by Political Morning Consult, also the day after or a couple days after the search, they

Things kind of broke down a lot more familiarly along the partisan lines that we have gotten used to over the years. So, for example, according to this political morning consult poll, 49 percent said that they strongly or somewhat approved of the FBI's decision to search Mar-a-Lago and 37 percent said that they strongly or somewhat disapproved.

Now, if those numbers sound familiar, that kind of 50 to 40-ish ratio, that's because that was very similar to Donald Trump's approval ratings for the four years, basically, that he was president. His approval rating hovered around 40%, low 40s typically, and his disapproval rating tended to be

you know, around 50 to 55%. And, you know, there was another question in the political morning console poll that broke down similarly, which is, did the FBI search Mar-a-Lago basically because there's actual evidence that he committed a crime or was it basically a witch hunt? The wording they used was, was it motivation to damage his political career? And again, 49% said no.

it was because there was evidence he committed a crime. 39% said it was to damage his political career. So you can see the same partisan divisions kind of coming to bear in these polls.

Yeah.

The second one, which was about the concealment or removal or destruction of government records, that carries a maximum of three years penalty and a possible disqualification from holding public office. I say possible because particularly in this idea of Trump running again for president, you know, legal experts think that ultimately the Constitution and requirements there, which don't say anything about imprisonment, will kind of supersede that.

that ruling. But then the final one around, you know, impeding the or obstructing the investigation, that could be a maximum of 20 years in prison. So 33 years of incarceration in total. But again, like that's the possible worst case scenario. I do think at this point, the Giuliani example is illustrative in the sense of

you know, a former sitting president has not been in this situation, whether the Department of Justice further chooses to escalate the situation to criminally charge Trump. There's just so many political factors they'll have to keep in mind with that in addition to what their case is and what they'd be able to argue in front of a jury.

I want to dig a little bit more into the broad 2024 ramifications and sort of the much broader politics of what it means to have a potential candidate facing legal issues. But let's run through a little bit more of the latest in these investigations first. So

That was the Mar-a-Lago search. Next is the Department of Justice January 6th investigation into the attack on the Capitol. Obviously, we have talked about this before. In large part, the developments have revolved around, you know, charging and sentencing individuals who entered the Capitol on the actual day. But when it comes to Trump specifically, given the reporting from The Washington Post that was backed up by The New York Times in late July, obviously,

What, Kayleigh, are we thinking about in terms of how this touches Trump? Right. So that reporting showed that the investigation is at least looking at Trump and his behavior. They've asked to speak to former aides to Vice President or then Vice President Mike Pence about conversations that were held around January 6th. If you've been watching the hearings that happened, you know, the House committee has been making the case that there was really a pressure campaign against

And they had a lot of testimony kind of backing that up, that Trump was really encouraging the vice president to do things that he simply couldn't do. Whether or not those behaviors and sort of what's been captured in the committee hearings constitutes a crime is obviously up to the Department of Justice to figure out through their investigation. Honestly, there hasn't been a whole lot released.

leaking out of that, aside from that sort of general reporting that Trump is part of it. But that doesn't necessarily, you know, that's different from a charge being laid. And I think that of all of his legal woes, that one is the murkiest to me. The sort of best information we have is coming out of these committee hearings. And nothing in those has really been kind of a smoking gun pointing to obvious criminal acts by Trump. So,

But yeah, that's sort of the murkiest one as far as these legal issues. And we'll have to wait and see if anything else comes out of that particular investigation.

On that note, in terms of legal possibilities that Trump faces, we are at that stage where reporters are just talking to legal scholars because they can't talk to Merrick Garland and say, what's up? So here are the three kind of big charges that potentially someone like Garland could bring forward, one of which is obstructing an official proceeding for Trump's alleged efforts to block Congress's vote count on January 6th.

A second charge could be conspiracy to defraud the United States, and that would be in connection with various schemes, like the one in Georgia we'll talk about, to overturn the results of the presidential election. A third possible charge, inciting a riot or insurrection, that apparently has been kind of diminished in recent weeks, but

But this is based on interviews that VOA, which is a national radio conglomerate here in the US, had with legal scholar Jonathan Turley, who is a conservative law professor at George Washington University.

Other experts they talked with said obstruction is pretty straightforward. As, you know, Kayleigh was getting at, there is documentary evidence as well as witness testimony from the hearings that suggest that Trump was trying to stop Pence from carrying out his task of obstruction.

certifying the vote that day. But people like Turley aren't necessarily convinced and think that the problem with this is that he cited in previous instances Democrats have protested certification of Republican presidents. You can't say that voting to decertify the results is obstruction. So this seems at this point to have...

Mueller investigation 2.0 written all over it. Obstruction could be something that the Department of Justice wants to move forward with, but we have no indication at this point how they're thinking and whether they'll actually file criminal charges.

And I just want to make a note quickly that even though it's all one sort of big investigation, this big kind of grand investigation into the attack on the Capitol on January 6th, the charges we've seen so far, it's 895, I think was the last count, of individuals who were charged for their actions on the day. That's a very different category. These are individuals who, by and large, went into the Capitol. So trespassing is an easy one.

They were breaking windows. They were assaulting police officers. These are obvious crimes that were committed and documented, and there's great evidence for many of these cases. So that kind of action is a little more clear-cut. A lot of people who were there on the day but didn't go into the building, didn't commit any crimes, haven't been charged with anything, and that's very different from this kind of more...

I don't know, political question of Trump's actions and, you know, what statements did he make to the vice president? What does that constitute? That's a lot different than kind of like somebody smashed through a window and then stole, you know, papers off of Nancy Pelosi's desk. You know, these are kind of different investigations, even though they're all part of one overarching investigation.

With something of this high profile, you would imagine that the Department of Justice doesn't want to bring charges unless it's close to an open and shut case because it's going down a pretty complicated road, given that a former president has never been charged for the crime and this particular former president is considering running for election. Given that sensitivity around this, Nathaniel, how are Americans thinking of it?

Well, Galen, stop me if you've heard this before, but in the case of January 6th, we have a YouGov poll from three weeks ago. It was the beginning of August. 45% of Americans thought that Trump should be charged in connection with January 6th, and 39% said he shouldn't be. And again, partisan splits here.

One interesting thing about this poll was when you ask people if Trump will be charged, like to basically asking people to be pundits and to predict it, 44% said that he wouldn't be and 23% said that he would be. So although 33% weren't sure, but it definitely seems like their Americans are a little bit more likely

You know, they're thinking that the Department of Justice kind of won't go through with it, presumably. Well, actually, I guess I shouldn't assume what they're thinking. But, you know, you could imagine, you know, they think, yeah, you know, maybe he by the letter of the law should be charged. But politically, it would be, you know, too risky. Or maybe they are just cynical and think, you know, politicians get away with this stuff all the time. But I thought that disconnect was interesting.

Yeah. Nathaniel, haven't some of the polls also asked, like, you know, do you think Trump's involvement in January 6th was like essentially wrong, but then follow it up by asking, do you think he should be charged? Yeah. Well, in the case of this YouGov poll, they asked, you know, do you think he did anything illegal on or with regard to January 6th? And it was very similar to the percent who thought that he should be charged. People said 44 to 38 percent that he did do something illegal.

In terms of you've seen perhaps more often like these questions about how much responsibility he has for the Capitol riot. And in that YouGov poll, 42% said he had a lot of responsibility, which lines up with pretty well with the percentage who think that he should be charged. But then an additional 13% said he had some responsibility. So maybe those are folks who think, yeah, he, you know, he egged them on, but it doesn't rise to a criminal level. Yeah.

Yeah, no, I was asking because that's something I remember from covering the Mueller report was many Americans were like, yeah, I think Trump did something wrong, but I'm not sure he should be charged. And we saw that with impeachment and potentially we're seeing that with this as well. I mean, what does that mean politically, I guess? Because it seems like in this case, there is a majority of Americans who think that Trump acted poorly surrounding January 6th.

Even if they don't think he should be charged or even if they don't think that he committed a crime, period. But does that mean then that like those people probably don't want him to be president again? And that are you know, and are there enough people like that in the Republican Party that could be caused to have doubts about his viability in a theoretical 2024 primary? Yeah.

Probably not, Galen. You know, again, the partisan splits in these polls show that Republicans overwhelmingly believe that, you know, this is politically motivated. They believe that he did nothing wrong or at least that it doesn't rise to the level of criminality. There was so in according to Political Morning Consult, who polls periodically on the 2024 election.

primaries, you know, obviously it's still very early, but, you know, it's interesting to see perhaps the trends there. And in their most recent poll, which was conducted a couple of days after the Mar-a-Lago raid, 58% of Republican voters said they would vote for Trump in the 2024 primary, which was actually

only by a couple percentage points, but it was the highest number that he had registered in that poll since 2020. So I think that shows you that the Republican base is still behind him. That said, of course, he has to win a general election as well. And of course, that's always going to be the rub with Donald Trump because once you get out of Republican territory and into independents and especially Democrats, views of him change very quickly. So actually, we at FiveThirtyEight have a polling system

average for favorable and unfavorable views of Trump, uh, overall, um, among the public. And so, you know, this could just be a blip. Um, it's certainly within the, you know, the usual range of Donald Trump's feelings, but on the day of the Mar-a-Lago raid, his net favorable rating was negative 11, uh,

which basically means that 11 percentage points more people had an unfavorable rating of him than a favorable rating of him. And that has gone up today to negative or sorry, gone down to negative 15. So there was a little bit of an increase in negative feelings toward Donald Trump after the raid. Again, the negative 15 range is well within the kind of normal range for Donald Trump. There have been some small fluctuations for this for years.

But maybe interesting. Obviously, there are margins of error here and there could be noise. There could also be a signal. But perhaps this is quite illustrative of the challenges of sometimes things that rile up your base don't go over well with the general public and a permanent conundrum for people.

politicians who need to win primaries and then go on to win general elections, as we have seen before. Let's move on from this and talk a little bit about some of the local investigations.

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I think some of these local investigations have gotten a little less coverage than the federal investigations. But nonetheless, I think the first one we'll talk about is somewhat serious. So that's the investigation in Fulton County, Georgia into, you know, basically attempts to overturn the result in that state or at least mess with it. You know, we have been over this. We have talked to Brad Raffensperger on this podcast before. Where does all of that stand?

Right. So there's a grand jury that is considering the investigation that the district attorney has been putting together there as to whether or not Trump committed a crime in his efforts to

changed the results in Georgia. You know, as you mentioned, Brad Raffensperger, we've all heard the recorded phone call of Trump asking him to find the exact number of votes that he needed to win the state. So that investigation, or that grand jury is considering that. The latest news was last week, President Trump's lawyer, former lawyer, advocate Rudy Giuliani being called to testify. Lindsey Graham was subpoenaed but has been fighting it and hasn't gone to testify yet. So that's sort of

The latest updates of that, you know, it's going to be up to the grand jury to decide whether or not to indict the former president, to indict Rudy Giuliani, anybody else who might have been involved in some of the behavior, specifically with Georgia officials after the election.

So this case being led by District Attorney Fannie Willis in Georgia potentially could charge Trump with criminal charges of election fraud solicitation, interference with the performance of election duties, and racketeering.

This was another business insider piece, but they did a really interesting, you know, historical look at Fannie Willis, the reputation she's built in the state. And I think a key thing to understand about her is she has a career of successfully using racketeering charges, in this case about Atlantic public school teachers conspiring to alter student test scores and getting those teachers convicted on conspiracy charges, you know, something typically kind of reserved for organized crime. So that is thought

of as one avenue that Georgia might pursue in their prosecution of Trump. That said, I think a key thing to kind of think through here is right now, you know, we're hearing stuff about Giuliani, about Senator Graham. The probe is not just looking at Trump. It's Trump's inner circle. And I think similar to the other legal problems facing Trump, the question becomes, what did he specifically do?

And will they be able to establish a convincing racketeering scheme, for instance, that Trump really was exerting a coercion campaign on getting people in Georgia to overturn the results? All right. Who wants to take a wild guess at where public opinion falls when it comes to foreign

former President Trump's actions in Georgia. I feel like we could just take a clip of Nathaniel and just like play it on loop every time you ask you to put it in. In reality, I would be kind of surprised if people were following this all that closely. I mean, and in fact, I think the granularity, we're not even going as granular as we could. Obviously, we are not a legal podcast. There are podcasts that are dedicated entirely to this stuff.

But like, I have to think that most people aren't even coming this close to understanding the different legal issues at play. And so I would be curious if any two people have opinions on the Fulton County, Georgia investigation. Do they have enough information to opine on it?

Well, Galen, we don't know because to your point, it has kind of flown under the radar so much that we, or I should be more specific, our excellent intern, Emily, was unable to find any polling of it since January 2021. If there are polls out there that we missed, please let us know, listeners. But

This poll back from January 2021, it was January 4th specifically because January 2021 is obviously a very active month and it matters I think when it was taken, found again kind of similarly to the ratios we've been seeing, 51% of Americans thought that Trump's call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger did constitute wrongdoing and 33% said it did not.

I would imagine if you asked today, you would see similar numbers along party lines, maybe with a larger percentage of people saying they were undecided because maybe they don't remember the story or they haven't been following it. But yeah.

As far as the sort of the politics around that case in particular, one development that did sort of go into that area was in Georgia and in a couple states, there were individuals who signed on to be like alternate electors for Trump. And some of those individuals, the grand jury has subpoenaed to testify and they want to talk to them.

Recently, a judge barred the district attorney involved in this case from investigating one of those alternate electors, Republican State Senator Burt Jones, because he's currently running for office. And the district attorney, Fannie Willis, actually held a fundraiser for his Democratic opponent. And so you can see some of the politics kind of trickling in here, obviously, if anything happens.

rises out of this, you know, that's going to be part of Trump's push because with all of these investigations, he's claimed it's just a partisan witch hunt. It's just the Democrats being afraid of him. And that's sort of been his defense through a lot of these investigations.

Maybe this is the part where I can bring up another aspect of the Politico morning consult polling, which I found interesting. Since we don't have maybe very specific polling on how people feel about this investigation in the moment.

Morning Consult just asked generally of Americans, do you think Trump broke the law while he was president? And in total, 58% of Americans said probably or definitely. So 42% said definitely, 16% said probably.

When it comes to whether they said no, probably not, or no, definitely not, that was only 31%. So 18% said definitely not, 13% said probably not, with 12% undecided. Obviously, there are partisan differences there, but with numbers that big, you see that at least a quarter of Republicans say that former President Trump definitely or probably broke the law while he was president.

So to the point about Americans not paying close attention to like individual investigations, you could still see that there's a vibe here that people think shady things were going on while former President Trump was president. In fact, I haven't looked up past polling on past presidents. There is, I think, a general sense in this country of mistrust of institutions, politicians, et cetera. So I think that you do this poll of any, you know, former president did this

You know, I'm sure if you polled Democrats, if George W. Bush broke the law while he was president, a lot of Democrats would say yes, even if they couldn't point to like one specific thing. But what should we make of that? Like, maybe we need the polling to make a comparison to see how unique this is for Trump. But that's that stood out to me.

Yeah, I mean, I think it goes back to what I was trying to get at earlier with the Mueller investigation in the sense that I do think, Galen, there is a sense that, right, Trump did some shady shit. But when it comes to actually holding...

holding him accountable, that's where I think Americans start to drop off. And I don't know if it's because they fear political ramifications for that, the divisiveness that it will add to the country, if they just wish it was all over. I mean, I think Nathaniel made some really good points, though, about it's easy to be lulled into that argument, particularly among Republicans,

that, yes, they embrace Trump, but, you know, because we have seen evidence and fractures of, like, someone like Ron DeSantis could give Trump a real run for his money if he were to run again in 2024. We've seen someone like Senator McConnell say, hey, our Republican picks for the Senate might not do so good this year because Trump was heavily involved in filling the slate of candidates. Yet at the same time, you know, like the Senate committee that's pouring money

you know, millions of dollars into these races, you know, has McConnell's blessing. They're not backing away from the Trump-backed candidates. And that's what I think is kind of challenging in all of this, is sussing out how much Americans are actually really done with Trump, including Republicans, but maybe actually really liked Trump's policies and maybe aren't opposed to another Trump term. And I think the answers and signals there are just all over the place.

Well, I think also there is a gap there with people's sort of sense of right and wrong or how they would like a president to behave and actual legal understanding. I mean, these are complicated questions.

Legal conditions and questions being raised. I don't know how familiar the average American is with the Espionage Act. And so this is complicated stuff that I think would maybe prevent somebody from very firmly saying, yes, I think he committed a crime or no, I don't think he did commit any crimes. These are complicated issues. Yeah.

All right, before we wrap up, there's one more sort of set of legal issues facing the former president, which are out of New York. From the headlines, I saw that former President Trump pled the fifth. I also saw headlines about the former CFO of the Trump Organization. Kayleigh, what are the details that I missed in my cursory news notifications while I was on vacation? Okay.

I mean, very quick. I mean, those are the headlines really quickly. There are two cases. There's a civil case and then a criminal case. Civil case is where Trump came in and pled the fifth a bunch of times. The criminal case is where Weisselberg was pleading guilty to tax fraud. What's interesting about his plea deal there is that he agreed to testify against the Trump organization, but not against Trump himself. He's not going to say anything about the former president.

And so, Sarah, this is like a different category of thing. You know, this is before Trump was president. In large part, this is about his business practices, not about his presidency. I mean, why is this even coming to the fore now, actually? I mean, because of all the things that you could point to and say, like, this seems political, you know, like the other things are about his presidency and the aftermath of his presidency. But why in 2022 are we talking about Trump's business practices? Yeah.

Because Trump's a businessman. And this case hasn't been resolved yet. I mean, to your point, this is something that has predated his, you know, time in the presidency is not about, you know, behavior in the presidency. It's about his business practices in New York.

And it's been an ongoing saga where there haven't been clear charges in either. Well, I mean, I guess to the extent like there were charges against Weisselberg, for instance, in the criminal case, but not against Trump. And in the civil case, that's gone back and forth in terms of continuing to investigate, but no clear charges made. And is it clear like how significant this would even be if there were like what is the liability here?

I mean, the liability on the criminal front, right, could be imprisonment. But as we were talking about earlier, you know, there's nothing to bar someone running from office doing that from prison or recently out of prison. The civil case is a little... Like for what? For tax fraud? For tax fraud. Yeah, right. For, you know, inflating the worth of his business and misleading investors, you know,

And for the civil component, you know, that's less clear what the ramifications would necessarily be for 2024. The idea that scandals in principle aren't good for a, you know, potential candidate. But as we've seen, Trump kind of defies what's expected of a potential candidate. Yeah.

All right, so let's stay in New York but switch topics. And we're still going to go to you, Nathaniel. There is a primary in New York on Tuesday. There are also two special elections. There are also primaries in Oklahoma and Florida. We did not forget you guys. But as usual, what's happening in New York is more important. Wow, shots fired. But...

But it's true. Does anyone here want to disagree with me on that? Sadly, I don't. Yeah, no. There you go. That's what I thought. I mean, from an election denier perspective, my eyes are on Florida, but fair enough. I wouldn't argue that it's the more important state. Um...

Nathaniel, we are going to have a reaction podcast on Wednesday. We are also going to be live-vlogging this Tuesday night. So just run through what information we're waiting to learn, basically. We don't have to run through every single candidate who's running, but just what the stakes are. Oh, I was going to run through every single candidate, Galen. No, so New York...

Of course, its congressional map got thrown out at kind of the last minute, which is why it's holding this second delayed primary. We already had the primary for statewide offices like governor, but congressional races got kicked to August because the map had to be redrawn.

And this has caused a lot of kind of scrambling within the state delegation. I think the two main races are the 12th district, which is pitting two incumbents, Democratic incumbents, Jerry Nadler and Carolyn Maloney, against each other. It's my district, Nathaniel. There you go, Galen. Don't forget to vote. I can't. I'm an unaffiliated voter. New York has closed primaries. Yes.

But, yeah, so this is a, you know, they've both been in office for a long time. They are kind of fixtures, Nadler on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Maloney on the Upper East Side. And one of them is not going to be in Congress next year. It looks like Nadler has the upper hand. He got the New York Times endorsement. He got Chuck Schumer's endorsement.

You also have a third notable challenger, Suraj Patel, who primaried Carolyn Maloney in the last two cycles, who's also running in this. So he's probably eating into her Eastside kind of voter base. So that's the one interesting primary. The second is in the 10th district, which is in lower Manhattan and part of Brooklyn. This is a free for all. So

Basically, it's a long story, but what happened was Representative Mondaire Jones, who represented a district just north of New York City, during redistricting, when the new maps got drawn, Sean Patrick Maloney, who represents the next district upstate, basically announced he was going to run in Mondaire Jones' district without telling anybody or consulting anybody because it's a slightly safer blue district and also Maloney lives there.

That left Mondo Jones basically up a creek without a paddle. And what he ultimately decided to do was go down to lower Manhattan and Brooklyn to run in this newly open 10th district, which is essentially the district that is kind of left behind, was kind of left behind on the wayside when Carolyn Maloney and Gerald Nadler decided to run against each other. See, it's complicated.

But Mondaire Jones is now running in the 10th district. He's like kind of the incumbent, but he has no real ties to the area. You also have a lot of local politicians, like kind of notable state assembly members and New York city counselors who are also running. And that's basically a total free for all. But the candidate who seems to be the front runner right now is Dan Goldman, who is the heir to the Levi Strauss gene fortune, which is not a thing you say very often. And he's also the guy who,

was the lead Democratic counsel in Trump's first impeachment. So folks might remember him from that. He spent a lot of money on this race. He has emerged as kind of the leading polling candidate, but he's still only polling in like the 20s. It's still a very unsettled race. And kind of the stakes of this race are a bit the tale as old as time, progressive versus more moderate Democrats. But I think what we'll be talking about

in the day after this election is the special or the special elections, because they're going to give us a more granular view of the political environment or give us at least two more data points as to what the political environment looks like. Is there anything to say? I mean, should we just wait and see what the margins are when they come in? Or is there anything you want to say about that before we sign off, Nathaniel?

Yeah, I mean, you know, I think we need to obviously see what the results are. But as you mentioned, there are two special elections for House. One, the 23rd district is not very competitive. But as you mentioned, we'll be looking at the margin to kind of see if there's any sign for the political environment. The other in the 19th district, that is a swing district. And so that legitimately could go either way. This is a Democratic election.

or it used to be Democratic held by the now lieutenant governor of New York, Antonio Delgado. Republicans think they have a good shot at taking it over. They've got a pretty strong candidate in Mark Molinaro. Of course, with Democrats' narrow margins in the House, that's not a seat that Democrats would like to lose. But again, also, this will be viewed as a sign of kind of how energized Democrats are or Republicans are

In the case of Democrats, in the wake of the Dobbs decision, in the case of Republicans, just in general with an unpopular Democratic president. And this primary is not this week, but we'll also have the final results in Alaska's House special election, which will be useful for the piece Nathaniel's working on. Has there been a shift in special elections since Dobbs? Stay tuned.

Yeah, we got lucky from a data perspective because basically the Supreme Court handed down this decision in Dobbs at the end of June, and there happened to be five special elections scheduled for the successive weeks. So we are getting a pretty decent sample size, especially for so late in the cycle of what the political environment is like and

some of those special elections, most notably in Nebraska's first district and Minnesota's first district, really seem to have good signs for Democrats. And we're starting to point toward the idea that maybe they do have the energy behind them. But obviously these two races in New York in particular, that'll basically double the amount of data that we have. So we don't want to draw too many conclusions quite yet, but we'll have more to say on Wednesday.

All right. Well, let's leave it there. Thank you, Sarah, Kaylee, and Nathaniel. Thanks, guys. Thank you, Kaylee. Thanks, y'all. My name is Galen Druk. Emily Vanesky is our intern and is in the control room today. Chadwick Matlin is our editorial director, and Anna Rothschild is on video editing. You

You can get in touch by emailing us at podcasts at 538.com. You can also, of course, tweet at us with any questions or comments. If you're a fan of the show, leave us a rating or review in the Apple Podcast Store or tell someone about us. Thanks for listening, and we will see you soon.