With Donald Trump set to take office next month, nearly two-thirds of voters said they believe the president-elect should investigate allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 White House race, and half said he should do more to prevent possible conflicts of interests involving his businesses, according to a new poll.
Although Donald Trump is set to take office next month, a new survey suggests a majority of voters are concerned about how the president-elect plans to separate his government work from his businesses, as well as worried about alleged Russian influence in the 2016 election.
A Suffolk University/USA Today national survey released Wednesday found that more than half -- or 53 percent -- of voters said they believe Trump needs to do more to avoid potential conflicts of interest between his businesses and work in the Oval Office.
Just over a third, or 35 percent, meanwhile, said they believe the president-elect has taken adequate steps to weed out such conflicts, according to survey results.
They poll's findings come one week after U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., announced a proposed bill that would require Trump and Vice President-Elect Mike Pence to disclose and divest any potential financial conflicts of interest.
Elizabeth Warren, Democrats push for President-elect Donald Trump to divest his business holdings
Warren, who is pushing the legislation along with other U.S. senators, contended that Americans deserve to know that the president is working in their best interests -- not what's best for himself or his businesses.
"The only way for President-elect Trump to truly eliminate conflicts of interest is to divest his financial interests and place them in a blind trust," she said in a statement.
The president-elect was expected to outline how he would separate his business holdings from his work in the Oval Office earlier this month, but rescheduled the event to January.
More than half, or 57 percent of survey respondents, meanwhile, expressed at least some concern about U.S. intelligence agencies' conclusion that the Russian government sought to influence the outcome of the 2016 election, the poll found.
Sixty-two percent further said they believe Congress and the incoming president's administration should investigate such allegations, according to survey results.
The CIA, in a recent secret assessment, concluded that Russia intervened in the U.S. presidential election to help Trump win the White House instead of just influencing confidence in America's electoral system, the Washington Post reported last week. FBI Director James Comey and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper Jr. reportedly supported the CIA's assessment.
Despite the intelligence agencies' findings, Trump has repeatedly questioned the Obama Administration's take on the cyberattacks.
"If Russia, or some other entity, was hacking, why did the White House wait so long to act? Why did they only complain after Hillary lost?" he tweeted earlier this month.
Intelligence agencies' findings, however, have sparked investigation calls from congressional lawmakers on both asides of the political aisle.
US Rep. Richard Neal seeks bipartisan probe of Russia's involvement in 2016 presidential election
With a bipartisan group of senators calling for an investigation into the intelligence community's findings, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the chamber's intelligence panel plans to look into the suspected interference.
House Speaker Paul Ryan also said he supports a continuing probe by the House Intelligence Committee, contending that "any foreign intervention in our elections is entirely unacceptable."
The poll surveyed 1,000 voters nationwide from Dec. 14 to 18 via telephone interviews. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points at a 95 percent level of confidence.