Majority of Americans support FBI’s raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home

Republicans have claimed the search was politically motivated

A new YouGov poll shows that Americans largely approve of the FBI’s search of former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Florida.

The poll surveyed 1,500 adult citizens of the United States between 13 August and 16 August 2022.

The survey found that 42 per cent of Americans “stongly approve” of the FBI executing a search warrant in relation to its probe of whether Mr Trump violated the Presidential Records Act, while 12 per cent of Americans say that they “somewhat approve” of it.

Comparatively, 36 per cent say they disapprove, with nine per cent saying they “somewhat disapprove” and 29 per cent saying they “strongly disapprove.”

The partisan breakdown is also stark. While 86 per cent of Democrats approve of the search, 72 per cent of Republicans disapprove in some way. Opinion among independents is more split, with 47 per cent supporting the search and 37 per cent disapproving, while 17 per cent were “not sure.”

The poll comes a week after the FBI executed the search warrant and Mr Trump has vehemently criticised the FBI’s actions.

The same poll found that Americans were split between whether the search was a serious attempt to discover what really happened or politically motivated, with 39 per cent saying that the search was a serious attempt to find out what really happened while 36 per cent said it was politically movitated. But 14 per cent said that the FBI was motivated by both of these and 11 per cent said they were not sure.

But 56 per cent of people surveyed said they disapproved of Mr Trump having documents related to nuclear weapons, with Republicans evenly split at 37 per cent each approving and disapproving, and 53 per cent of independents disapproving.