A majority of Americans approve of the House GOP’s plans to probe Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings, a newly released poll shows.
According to the Rasmussen Reports poll released Monday, 62% of likely voters in the U.S. approve of the recently announced plans by the top Republicans on the House Oversight and Judiciary committees to investigate the overseas ventures by the president’s son.
Of those, 42% say they strongly approve of a congressional investigation. On the other side, 34% say they disapprove, and 24% of those strongly disapprove.
Among independents, 63% approve of an investigation. Democrats are far more disapproving of the GOP’s plans, with just 37% saying they approve of the probe, compared with 86% of Republicans who approve.
Reps. James Comer of Kentucky and Jim Jordan of Ohio, the incoming chairs of the House Oversight and Judiciary committees, respectively, announced their intent earlier this month in a Capitol Hill press conference where they laid out evidence that they say “raises troubling questions” about whether Mr. Biden has been “compromised by foreign governments.”
They pledged to expand their investigation into Mr. Biden when Republicans control the House in the next Congress, which convenes in January.
SEE ALSO: Hunter Biden’s dubious business dealings raise specter of a ‘compromised’ president
Citing evidence obtained from Hunter Biden’s laptop and through whistleblowers, Mr. Comer said his committee had uncovered a “decade-long pattern of influence peddling, national security risks, and political cover-ups” committed by the Biden family with the direct knowledge and involvement of the president.
Republicans on the Oversight Committee said in a 31-page report that Mr. Biden was directly involved in his family’s business deals, including those involving foreign interests, despite claiming he did not know the details.
“That is a lie,” Mr. Comer said when releasing the report. “Whistleblowers describe President Biden as the chairman of the board for these businesses. He participated in meetings and phone calls. Documents show that he was a partner with access to an office.
“To be clear, Joe Biden is the big boss,” he said.
The White House quickly brushed off the impending probe.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre accused Republicans on Friday of reneging on their pledge to bring down costs for American families, saying they have instead focused on launching probes against the president and his family.
“They said that they were going to deliver for the American people, that they were going to actually do things that give relief to Americans,” she said. “What they’re doing instead — their top priority when they get the majority — is to talk about investigating the president’s family instead of doing what they said that they would do.”
But according to the Rasmussen poll, 61% of respondents believe it is likely that Mr. Biden “was consulted about and perhaps profited from his son Hunter’s overseas business deals including at least one involving a company in mainland China.”
Of those, 44% say it is very likely that the president was consulted on his son’s business ventures. Just 34% of respondents don’t think it is likely that Mr. Biden was consulted.
The national poll, conducted in partnership with New York Post Columnist Miranda Divine’s Laptop from Hell, surveyed 1,000 likely voters on Nov. 22 and had a plus or minus 3 percentage point margin of error.
• Joseph Clark can be reached at jclark@washingtontimes.com.
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