House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has bandied the phrase “culture of corruption” a lot even before he kicked off formal impeachment proceedings against President Joe Biden, accusing not only the president, but members of his family as well, of engaging in corrupt practices that took advantage of the president’s position in government.
It may encourage McCarthy and his fellow House Republicans to know that Americans believe their claims – at least against Hunter Biden – with 72% saying that they think Hunter personally profited off his dad’s position as vice president, according to a poll from YouGov and the Economist.
And that belief isn’t limited to Republicans, who, while an overwhelming majority are convinced that Hunter took advantage of his father’s position in government – 92% – the belief is shared by a lot of Democrats as well, with 53% saying they have little doubt that the accusations against the younger Biden are true.
Another poll, this time by Ipsos and Politico, show pretty much the same results.
Now for the bad news: While the two polls show that Hunter Biden’s guilt is largely a given for many Americans, the same cannot be said for his father, the president. A very recent YouGov poll shows that only 29% of Americans “strongly support” an impeachment against the president, while 31% strongly oppose it.
The rest are more or less undecided, with 15% saying they “somewhat support” efforts to oust the president and 10% saying they are somewhat opposed to impeachment. 15% say they’re not sure if they support or oppose impeachment proceedings.
Still, nothing’s set in stone at this point. Republicans say they have tons of evidence against Biden and his family, but have yet to bring them to light. And then there’s the Democrats – who have largely fallen in line behind a Biden-Harris re-election campaign next year – admitting that Eric Schwerin, who used to be the president of Hunter Biden’s now infamous Rosemont Seneca Advisors, was in charge of then vice president Biden’s bookkeeping from 2009 to 2017.
In a statement to Fox News, a spokesperson for the Democrat minority of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability said, “Mr. Schwerin, who served as then-Vice President Biden’s bookkeeper from 2009 to 2017, explained that he was not aware of any transactions into or out of the then-Vice President’s bank account related to business conducted by any Biden family member.”
Not exactly damning, but it does raise some ethical questions, at the very least, especially given Schwerin’s key role in Hunter Biden’s business deals in China.
At the very least, the legal cesspool Hunter Biden has found himself in is a liability to the president, who is already having to contend with high dissatisfaction ratings among the general American voting population.
And the new indictment Hunter is facing on gun charges isn’t helping. A poll from Emerson College shows that in the same way 47% of voters say that former president Trump’s indictments rule him out as a candidate they’d vote for, 46% say that Hunter Biden’s cases do the same thing for them in the case of Joe Biden.
Tim Ramos has written for various publications, corporations, and organizations – covering everything from finance, politics, travel, entertainment, and sports – in Asia and the U.S. for more than 10 years.
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