Americans believe intel community has own agenda

President Trump often refers to opposition from the "deep state," the federal bureaucrats who remain in position from administration to administration and tend to support the big-government Democratic Party.

Now a poll by Rasmussen Reports finds 45 percent of likely U.S. voters believe U.S. intelligence agencies have their own political agenda.

Another 43 percent say they are generally performing their work impartially.

Another 11 percent are not sure.

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The poll asked "How do you rate the performance of U.S. intelligence agencies like the CIA and the NSA?" and "Do U.S. intelligence agencies have their own political agenda, or do they generally perform impartially?"

The issue has been in the headlines because of the investigation of alleged Russia-Trump campaign collusion by the FBI and special counsel Robert Mueller, who hired mostly Democrats who donated to Hillary Clinton's campaign. The impartiality of FBI investigators has been questioned because of virulent anti-Trump text messages, including one in which the lead investigator in both the Hillary Clinton email and Russia probes, Peter Strzok, vowed to "stop" Trump from being elected and referred to an "insurance policy" in case he and his colleagues failed.

Rasmussen said that despite "the media frenzy over President Trump's comments about U.S. intelligence following his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this week, voters still think U.S. intelligence agencies are doing a good job."

That number is 43 percent.

However, 45 percent don't deny that the agencies may be serving a larger agenda.

The survey of 1,000 likely voters was conducted July 17-18.