Most U.S. adults believe President Joe Biden’s involvement in his son’s shady foreign business deals was at least unscrupulous but may have chalked up to a crime.
Of the 1,163 adults surveyed in The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research’s October poll, 68 percent said they believed Biden’s role as the “brand” in his family’s pay-to-play overseas money-making scheme was unethical or illegal.
The poll comes just one month after AP-NORC declared that Americans are “sharply divided over whether Biden acted wrongly in son’s businesses,” in a write-up that even included a quote from a 60-year-old New York Democrat who claimed “there is no proof” that Biden did anything wrong.
At the time, AP-NORC did not dispute the comment. Its latest poll, however, shows most Americans understand that Biden, who repeatedly denied having knowledge of his son’s foreign business dealings, did in fact participate in the influence-peddling scheme that enriched his family by millions.
The Republicans surveyed by AP-NORC were far more willing to declare Biden guilty, with 96 percent answering that the funds the Biden family received from oligarchs in nearly two dozen foreign countries including China were likely dirty or criminal. Even 40 percent of Democrats, however, agreed that the president’s involvement in the deals and subsequent diluted payments was suspect if not illicit.
AP-NORC immediately tried to couch its findings by noting that only a third, 33 percent, of U.S. adults say they approve of House Republicans’ impeachment inquiry into Biden.
