A majority of US voters agree with GOP Rep. Justin Amash that Trump ‘committed impeachable offenses,’ according to a new poll

Reuters

• A majority of American voters agree with Republican Rep. Justin Amash that President Donald Trump "committed impeachable offenses," a new INSIDER poll found.
• Amash is the first Republican lawmaker to call for Trump’s impeachment based on the former special counsel Robert Mueller’s findings in the Russia investigation.
• In the wake of Mueller’s report, as well as a news conference the former FBI director gave last week, calls for Trump’s impeachment have grown steadily louder.
• House Democrats have been pumping the brakes on impeachment out of fear of political backlash. But mounting public support for the move could lead to a shift in Democrats’ strategy.
• Visit BusinessInsider.com for more stories.

A majority of US voters agree with Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan that President Donald Trump "committed impeachable offenses, according to a new INSIDER poll.

Amash made headlines last month when he became the first Republican lawmaker to call for Trump’s impeachment, based on what was contained in the former special counsel Robert Mueller’s report in the Russia investigation. He also accused Attorney General William Barr of deliberately misrepresenting Mueller’s findings and of trying to "sell the president’s false narrative" about the report to the public.

But Amash said that despite Barr’s portrayal of the Mueller report, Trump’s actions "meet the threshold for impeachment" and he likely would have been indicted on obstruction of justice charges, had he not been president.

Read more: Democrats are divided as ever on impeachment after Mueller punted the question to Congress

According to INSIDER’s poll conducted from May 31 to June 2, 51% of respondents agree with Amash’s statement, and within that, 31% said they "strongly agree."

24% of voters disagree with Amash’s statement, with 17% saying they "strongly disagree." 17% said they neither agree nor disagree, and 8% said they didn’t know.

Among respondents who said they would likely vote in the 2020 Republican primary, about 17% agreed or strongly agreed with Amash’s statement.

Calls for impeachment growing louder after Mueller’s public statement

House lawmakers have been grappling with how to proceed on the impeachment question since Mueller’s report was released in April.

While many progressive Democrats and 2020 contenders support launching impeachment proceedings, mainstream lawmakers like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler say they won’t move forward on impeachment until there is broad public support for it.

Several polls conducted in early May found that a majority of Americans opposed impeachment hearings at the time.

Read more: Mueller says he won’t make any more public statements on the Russia probe, but his own words bolster the case for Democrats to have him testify before Congress

But the calls to impeach have been growing louder in recent days, particularly since Mueller gave his first public statement on his findings last week.

Many mistakenly believe the Mueller report "exonerated" Trump of "any wrongdoing"

It’s unclear what prompted the shift because Mueller didn’t reveal anything new in his remarks (much of what he said was included in his report). But some legal experts have suggested that Mueller saying many of his key conclusions out loud, even if he was directly quoting from the report, may have swayed public opinion in favor of impeachment.

Indeed, just 3% of Americans have actually read Mueller’s entire report, according to a recent CNN poll. And as one GOP voter told NBC News, Amash’s remarks were the first time she heard that Mueller did not exonerate the president.

"I was surprised to hear there was anything negative in the Mueller report at all about President Trump. I hadn’t heard that before," Cathy Garnaat told the outlet. "I’ve mainly listened to conservative news and I hadn’t heard anything negative about that report and President Trump has been exonerated."

A Quinnipiac poll from early May found 76% of Republicans and 11% of Democrats wrongly believed Mueller cleared Trump of  "any wrongdoing." Overall, 38% of Americans thought Mueller had competely exonerated Trump, the poll found.

Meanwhile, an INSIDER poll conducted in April asked voters whether pursuing Trump’s impeachment was a good use of House Democrats’ time.

22% of respondents who identified as neither liberal nor conservative believed impeachment was an "extremely" or "very good" use of their time. 32% of slightly liberal voters believed the same, as did 34% of moderately liberal voters and 50% of very liberal voters.

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See Also:

• Nancy Pelosi said she doesn’t want to impeach Trump because that would be giving him what he wants
• Meghan Markle, who once called Donald Trump ‘misogynistic,’ will reportedly be absent during his meeting with the royal family
• These are the top 10 states that people are moving to

SEE ALSO: Justin Amash says ‘a lot of’ Republican lawmakers agree with him that Trump should be impeached but won’t say it publicly

Source: Business Insider – ssheth@businessinsider.com (Sonam Sheth)