7 in 10 think Trump intentionally held on to classified documents: poll

by Julia Shapero - 02/16/23 12:59 PM ET

Department of Justice via AP
This image contained in a court filing by the Department of Justice on Aug. 30, 2022, and partially redacted by the source, shows a photo of documents seized during the Aug. 8 FBI search of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.

Nearly seven in 10 Americans in a new Quinnipiac University poll said they think former President Trump intentionally held on to classified documents after leaving the White House.

Sixty-nine percent of respondents said the former president purposely took the classified materials that were eventually recovered from his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, while another 18 percent said Trump mistakenly had the items in his possession, according to the poll released Thursday.

About 300 classified documents have been recovered from Mar-a-Lago since Trump left the White House, some 100 of which were found in an FBI search of the property last August.

The government obtained a search warrant for Mar-a-Lago amid concerns that the former president had not turned over all classified materials in his possession, as requested by a May subpoena.

Americans’ views on Trump’s handling of classified materials differ along partisan lines, with 87 percent of Democrats saying Trump intentionally held on to the documents. However, about half of Republicans — 48 percent — agreed with that sentiment as well, compared to 37 percent who said they think he held on to them mistakenly.

A smaller but still sizable share of Americans — 48 percent — said in Thursday’s poll that they believe President Biden purposefully took the classified materials found at his home in Wilmington, Del., and at his former office in Washington, D.C., in recent months. Another 39 percent said Biden mistakenly took the classified documents.

Even fewer respondents said former Vice President Mike Pence intentionally held on to classified materials discovered in his Indiana home, with 47 percent saying it was a mistake. Democrats were even more likely than Republicans — 56 percent to 50 percent — to say that Pence inadvertently took the classified documents.

“A large majority of Americans figure former President Trump made a conscious decision to take them home, while his V.P., and to some extent his successor, are more apt to be given the benefit of the doubt,” Quinnipiac University polling analyst Tim Malloy said in a statement.

The poll was conducted from Feb. 9 to 14 with 1,580 adults and had a margin of error of 2.5 percentage points.