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Nearly half of Americans say Trump should be removed from office: Poll

Thursday, 23 January 2020 3:09 PM [ Last Update: Friday, 24 January 2020 6:09 AM ]

People in New York hold signs critical of US President Donald Trump while participating in a protest in support of his potential impeachment on December 17, 2019. (Getty Images)

Nearly half of Americans say US President Donald Trump should be removed from office, and a majority want more witnesses to testify in his Senate impeachment trial, according to a new poll.

About 44 percent of adults say Congress should convict Trump and remove him, another 15 percent say he should be reprimanded formally with a congressional censure, the Reuters/Ipsos poll released Wednesday found.

Some 31 percent said the charges should be dismissed.

About 72 percent in the survey also said that the Senate impeachment trial “should allow witnesses with firsthand knowledge of the impeachment charges to testify,” including US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former national security adviser John Bolton.

Trump so far has rejected the requests by Democrats to turn over documents related to the administration’s activities in Ukraine last year. He has also urged officials like Bolton and Pompeo not to participate.

And 70 percent of the public, including 80 percent of Democrats and 73 percent of Republicans, said senators should “act as impartial jurors” during the trial.

Democrats in the US House of Representatives launched an impeachment probe against Trump in September after an anonymous intelligence community whistleblower accused the Republican US president of pressing Ukraine's president to investigate Trump's political rival, Joe Biden, and Biden's son, as well as a debunked theory that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 US presidential election.

The House voted to impeach Trump last month on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress over the Ukraine scandal.

Impeachment begins in the House. If the lower chamber of Congress approves impeachment, a vote is then held in the Senate. A two-thirds majority vote would be needed in the Senate to remove the president from office.

With Republicans in control of the Senate, Trump’s acquittal also seems likely.

Trump became the third president in US history to be impeached, following the impeachments of former Presidents Bill Clinton and Andrew Johnson. Neither Johnson nor Clinton were convicted by the Senate.

In 1974, then President Richard Nixon resigned during his second term after it became certain he would be impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate over the Watergate scandal.

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