The vast majority of Americans don't approve of President Joe Biden's decision to pardon his son Hunter after repeatedly promising he would do no such thing, a new poll shows. The figures show it to be a stain in Biden's legacy in the years to come.
The results come from a recent Associated Press poll conducted Dec. 5-9, between 1,251 adults. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 3.7 percentage points.
The survey shows that only 2 in 10 Americans agree with Biden's actions. It also found that a relatively small share of Americans "strongly" or "somewhat agree with the pardon, while about half say they "strongly" or "somewhat" disapprove of it.
The disapproval echoes the bipartisan uproar after Biden announced the decision. In fact, lawmakers and voters from both sides of the aisle publicly decried the decision as controversial, according to the poll.
The Associated Press explains that about 4 in 10 Democrats approve of the pardon, while about 3 in 10 disapprove and about one-quarter did not have an opinion or did not know enough to say. By contrast, the overwhelming majority of Republicans and about half of independents had a negative opinion.
There is also a slight race and ethnicity divide. For instance, slightly less than half of Hispanic adults disapprove of the pardon, compared with about 6 in 10 white adults and about 3 in 10 Black adults. Relatively large shares of Black and Hispanic Americans— about 3 in 10— were neutral, the poll found.
Despite the unpopularity of his decision, the president's approval rating has not shifted meaningfully since before his party lost the White House to Trump, the Associated Press explains. About 4 in 10 Americans "somewhat" or "strongly" approve of the way Biden is handling his job as president, which is roughly where his approval has stood in the AP-NORC polls since January 2022.
Headlines about Hunter Biden have plagued the news throughout the year, after he was found guilty for federal felony gun and tax convictions in Delaware and California. His father, President Biden, had promised he would not use his executive power to pardon him or commute his sentence. But that all changed when now President-elect Donald Trump reclaimed the White House.
The 82-year-old president said in a statement that his son's prosecution on charges of tax evasion and falsifying federal weapons purchase forms were politically motivated.
"He believes in the justice system, but he also believes that politics infected the process and led to a miscarriage of justice," said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who along with Biden and other White House officials insisted for months that Hunter Biden would not get a pardon.
The decision led to major criticism even from members of his own party, with some outright disapproving the action, while others called for additional pardons that not just favored his immediate family.
That was the case for New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has also launched a bid to be the top Democrat in the House Oversight Committee. She called on Biden to commute the sentences of federal inmates on death row, telling The Independent that doing so is more than just about the individual pardon. She cited the Native American activist Leonard Peltier, who is serving a life sentence for killing two FBI agents, though advocates say he was wrongly convicted.
"It's less about the fact that the President pardoned his son and more about the fact that he's only really pardoning his son when there are, in fact, many people, including Leonard Peltier, as well as several other cases of many Americans who are on death row, who should be taken off death row, and who are facing the end of their lives if this president does not act," she said.
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