A majority of Americans say they believe the allegations made by attorney Michael Cohen against President Trump, his former client, are credible, according to a new American Barometer survey released on Monday.
The poll found that 51 percent of voters surveyed said they believed Cohen’s claim that Trump directed him before the 2016 presidential election to pay adult-film star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal in exchange for their silence over their alleged affairs with Trump.
Twenty-eight percent of respondents said Cohen’s allegations were not credible, and another 21 percent said they were not aware of the claims.
The survey found a partisan divide on the issue, with 70 percent of Democrats and 32 percent of Republicans saying Cohen’s allegations were credible.
Trump’s former personal attorney was sentenced last week to three years in prison for a series of crimes, including campaign finance violations and bank fraud tied to the payments to Daniels and McDougal.
Cohen, who is cooperating in special counsel Robert Mueller‘s probe into Russia’s election meddling and any possible ties between the Trump campaign and Moscow, says Trump pushed him to make the payments.
GOP pollster Conor Maguire said on Monday that Republicans will be less likely to believe Cohen given his past behavior.
“Cohen has been back and forth lying, not lying, changing his testimony this entire time,” Maguire told Hill.TV’s Joe Concha on “What America’s Thinking.”
“The vast majority of them [Republicans are] saying no, no way. This guy has been lying, flip-flopping, and there’s no reason to believe him,” he continued.
The American Barometer is a daily survey conducted by the HarrisX polling company on behalf of Hill.TV.
The latest survey was conducted on Dec. 15-16 among 1,000 registered voters. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
— Julia Manchester
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