Skip to content Skip to footer

Poll: Half of Country Says Trump Should Be Charged for Jan. 6 Involvement

Only 31 percent of Americans think the former president should not face charges for the Capitol attack.

Donald Trump arrives to give remarks during a rally at the Adams County Fairgrounds on June 25, 2022, in Mendon, Illinois.

A new poll published on Friday shows that nearly 6 in 10 Americans believe that former President Donald Trump bears responsibility for the attack on the United States Capitol building nearly one and a half years ago.

According to the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll, which was conducted between June 23 and 27, 58 percent of Americans say Trump bears a “great deal” or “quite a bit” of responsibility for the attack perpetrated by a mob of his loyalists on January 6, 2021. Another 12 percent say he bears a “moderate amount” of responsibility for what happened, while only 28 percent say he doesn’t bear much or any responsibility at all.

In terms of who bears the most responsibility for the attack among the political figures the poll asked about, Trump received the highest numbers. A plurality of Americans (46 percent) also say Republicans in Congress were more responsible than not for the attack, with less than a third (30 percent) saying they weren’t that responsible. Just 22 percent blamed Democrats in Congress for the events that transpired, with 51 percent saying Democrats bore little or no responsibility for the attack.

Only one group of people — the actual individuals involved in the attack — received a higher rating than Trump on the question of who was responsible for the January 6 attack, with 78 percent of respondents in the poll saying the January 6 mob bore a great amount or quite a bit of responsibility for what happened that day.

Attitudes on the hearings, and on Trump specifically, run largely along partisan lines, with 92 percent of Democrats saying the former president should be blamed “quite a bit” or a “great deal,” versus just 21 percent of Republicans who think so.

A plurality of Americans — 48 percent, according to the poll — believe that Trump should be charged with a crime for his involvement on January 6 and the days leading up to it. Only 31 percent said he shouldn’t be charged, while 20 percent say they didn’t know enough to have an opinion.

These opinions come even though many in the poll admitted they hadn’t been paying attention to the January 6 House committee’s hearings on the attack. Fifty-six percent of respondents said they’ve been following news about the hearings, but when asked if they’ve watched or listened to the hearings, 57 percent of those surveyed said they had not.

Notably, the poll’s findings were obtained before a surprise January 6 committee hearing that was held on Tuesday, which included explosive testimony from former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who worked closely with Trump as an assistant to the president’s former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. Hutchinson revealed many alarming details about Trump’s mindset on the day of and in the weeks preceding the January 6 attack, which occurred while Congress was in session to certify the 2020 presidential election results.

According to Hutchinson, for example, Trump was furious about his loyalists being denied entry to his “Stop the Steal” rally outside the White House that morning, even though many of them were carrying weapons, including AR-15 rifles. Trump, who would later encourage his loyalists to descend onto the Capitol, wasn’t concerned about the weapons because, according to Hutchinson, Trump knew that the armed mob was not a threat to him.

“I don’t fucking care that they have weapons,” Hutchinson recalled Trump had said. “They’re not here to hurt me.”

“Let my people in. They can march to the Capitol from here,” Hutchinson also recollected the former president as saying.

Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn

Dear Truthout Community,

If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.

We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.

Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.

There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.

Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?

It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.

We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.

We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.

Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.

We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.

With love, rage, and solidarity,

Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy