Opposition to special counsel Robert Mueller is on the rise, according to a new poll released Friday.
The poll said 45 percent of respondents didn’t approve of how Mueller was handling the investigation into ties between Russia and President Trump’s 2016 campaign. That’s up sharply from 31 percent in January.
[Byron York: One year down, and it’s still Mueller time]
The new poll showed 49 percent approved of Mueller’s actions, about the same as the 50 percent who felt the same way in the January poll.
The higher disapproval number for Mueller seems to indicate that more people have decided what they think about him over the last six months, and decided that they don’t approve. In the January poll, 19 percent said they had no opinion about Mueller, but in the new poll, just 5 percent had no opinion.
People’s view of Mueller may have been influenced by Trump and Rudy Giuliani, one of Trump’s personal lawyers. Both have ramped up their efforts this year to discredit the Mueller investigation as a “witch hunt” and “unconstitutional.”
The Washington Post-Schar School poll was conducted among 1,473 adults online and via phone interviews between June 27 and July 2. Its results have a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points.
