West News Wire: All claims of a larger network of corruption inside the Biden family remain unsubstantiated. The notion that Hunter Biden has personally amassed a large sum of money through international business dealings and is the focus of an ongoing criminal investigation is less debatable. He agreed to plead guilty earlier this summer to two misdemeanour counts of failing to pay taxes on millions of dollars in income in 2017 and 2018, along with a separate agreement that might allow him to avoid being convicted on a separate charge of illegal gun ownership. However, the plea agreement fell through after the judge, a Trump appointee, said she refused to “rubber-stamp” the agreement because she claimed it wasn’t standard. Republicans accused the Biden administration of giving Hunter a “sweetheart” deal and in August, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to continue probing Hunter Biden’s finances.
The president’s son doesn’t look good at all, and according to a recent poll, Americans are not satisfied with Hunter Biden’s actions. A YouGov/The Economist poll conducted in August, following the failure of the plea agreement, revealed that 72% of Americans, including a small majority (53%) of Democrats, believe Hunter Biden personally benefited from his father’s positions in government. According to the same survey, only 17% of Americans have a favourable opinion of Hunter Biden, while 66% have an unfavourable one (and a further 17% stated they didn’t know). According to a Yahoo News survey conducted by YouGov in August, 59 percent of Americans think Hunter Biden traded on his family name and proximity to power to get millions of dollars from foreign business associates. The same poll found that 51 percent of Americans believe that Hunter Biden improperly claimed tens of thousands of dollars in tax deductions. And an Ipsos/Politico Magazine poll conducted in August found, similarly, that 59 percent of Americans think that Hunter Biden is guilty of the alleged crimes in the tax non-payment case, including 51 percent of Democrats. Notably, only 2 percent of respondents said they thought he wasn’t guilty, and 38 percent said they didn’t know.
However, according to the results of the YouGov/Economist study, Americans believe that most presidents’ children receive some sort of special treatment. According to the survey, 84% of respondents believe that because of their parents’ jobs, children of U.S. presidents can get away with things that other people cannot, and a similar percentage (85%) believe that adult children occasionally personally profit from their parents’ positions in power. While a majority of Democrats believe Hunter Biden certainly committed crimes and the majority of Americans believe he has benefited financially from his father’s jobs, the behaviour may not be startling or unexpected.
