New Poll: Was The Firing Of James Comey Appropriate?

Everybody seems to have an opinion on whether firing James Comey was the right thing to do.

Personally, the firing doesn’t bother me as much as the timing.

NBC News conducted an online poll and discovered that quite a few Americans aren’t comfortable with the way this all went down.

According to the poll, 54 percent of Americans polled do not believe firing Comey was the right thing to do. Only 38 percent were fine with the firing.

A plurality of respondents, 46 percent, also said they believed Trump dismissed the FBI chief because of how he handled the investigation into Moscow’s interference in the election and possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.

About a quarter of those polled, 24 percent, said they thought he was fired over his handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, while 22 percent chalked up the firing to being something else.

No idea what that something else is, but I’m sure there are a lot of theories.

While White House aides stressed on Tuesday and Wednesday that Trump leaned on the Justice Department memo in firing Comey, the president bucked that account Thursday, saying he would have fired the FBI chief “regardless of the recommendation.”

The NBC/Survey Monkey poll was conducted Wednesday and Thursday.

Also included in the poll were questions about the job performance of Comey. He received 44 percent disapproval for the job, with only 25 percent approving, and another 28 percent who said they didn’t know enough to make a decision.

That may be related to the cases where Comey was front and center.

Approval for how Comey handled the Russia investigation tied with the percentage of people who did not know enough to have an opinion at 34 percent, while 27 percent disapproved.

In comparison, 57 percent of survey takers disapproved of how Comey handled Clinton’s email investigation compared to a mere 19 percent approval, while 20 percent of participants didn’t know enough to have an opinion.

Still, a large number of respondents would be more comfortable with Comey still in place than not, it seems.

A majority of respondents in the NBC/Survey Monkey poll, 55 percent, said they have less confidence in the Russia probe now that Comey is gone, while 36 percent said they have more confidence now.

The poll was conducted on May 10 and 11, with 3,746 likely U.S. voters responding. It has a margin of error of 2.5 percentage points.

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