Poll: Only 37% Found Michael Cohen’s Testimony Credible

Only 37 percent of people surveyed found former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s testimony in front of the House Oversight and Government Reform this week to be credible, according to a poll published Friday.

The results of the poll, conducted by The Hill-HarrisX poll between February 28 and March 1, suggested that the high-profile testimony of Michael Cohen would likely not have a big political impact for President Donald Trump.

The percentage of those finding Cohen credible was still higher than those that did not find him credible — 25 percent. But the plurality of respondents, 39 percent, said they had not formed an opinion of Cohen’s testimony.

Democrats were more likely to believe Cohen was credible, at 58 percent, than Republicans, at only 15 percent.

Only 35 percent of independent respondents said they found Cohen credible, versus 18 percent who said he was not. Almost half, 48 percent, said they were unsure.

More male respondents were certain of their opinion on Cohen than female respondents.

Forty-two percent of male respondents said they found Cohen to be credible, 31 percent said he was not, and 27 percent were unsure.

That is compared to only 32 percent of female respondents believing him to be credible, 19 percent who said he was not, and 49 percent saying they were unsure.

During the hearing, Cohen accused Trump of being an unscrupulous person who cared only about winning but also contradicted himself by saying Trump never expected to win the presidency and just wanted to promote his brand.

He also accused Trump of directing him to do things by “secret code” — not outright telling him to do things but communicating in a code by which he knew exactly what Trump wanted.

He expressed regret over working with Trump for the past ten years and said he had nothing to gain from his testimony. However, he refused to rule out future book deals, movies, or TV show appearances, or to donate any future proceedings from such events to charity.

Republicans on the committee attacked Cohen’s credibility, pointing out that he has been indicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller for lying to Congress.

Democrats were much more sympathetic to him and focused on trying to dig for dirt on Trump.

Cohen said he did not have any direct evidence Trump colluded with Russia nor had he ever visited Prague.

The so-called pee-dossier, that was funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee and served as the basis for Democrats’ collusion claims, had alleged that Cohen had met in Prague with Russians.

The Hill-HarrisX poll surveyed 996 registered voters and has a sampling margin of error of 3.11 percentage points.