Poll: Two-thirds of Americans, including Democrats, favor Biden congressional probe

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:

• A Yahoo News/YouGov poll published on Wednesday found that almost two-thirds of Americans are in favor of having President Biden investigated by Congress.
• The poll also revealed that 52 percent of Democrats want a congressional investigation of the classified documents found at Biden’s home and post-vice-presidential office.
• Only 31% of Americans say that Biden’s classified document situation is “less serious” than Trump’s.

A Yahoo News/YouGov poll released Wednesday found nearly two-thirds of US adults, including more than half of Democrats, favor a congressional investigation into President Joe Biden’s mishandling of classified documents.

The new poll found that 64% of Americans, with 52% of Democrats are in favor of Congress “investigating the classified documents found at Biden’s home and post-vice-presidential office.”

Just 16% of Americans and 27% of Democrats opposed Congress investigating the scandal. 

Respondents aren’t convinced that Biden’s classified materials discovery is less serious than former President Donald Trump’s mishandling of classified documents. 

Biden supporters say that he kept far fewer documents from the White House than Trump, and immediately returned them to the National Archives when they were discovered. Trump allegedly refused to return the “highly classified” files to the Archives.

Just 31% of Americans said that Biden’s case is “less serious” than Trump’s. Thirty-two percent called Biden’s scandal “equally serious” and 21% said Biden’s was “more serious” than Trump’s. 

Highly sensitive papers were found at Biden’s storage at the Penn Biden Center think tank in Washington and his Wilmington, Delaware, home. A probe into Biden’s mishandling of the files is the most popular of the many investigations House Republicans have vowed to undertake.

Americans were equally favorable to a probe into “the security of the U.S. southern border” (which also received 64% support) and less supportive of investigations into the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic (59%), Hunter Biden (49%), and the US exit from Afghanistan (49%).

Biden’s job approval rating did not change from mid-December at 43%, according to a recent poll. 

The poll, with 1,538 US adult respondents, was conducted between Jan. 12 and Jan. 16. 

Biden’s lawyers discovered the first batch of 10 or so classified documents stashed at the Biden Center on Nov. 2, 2022. The discovery was first made public on Jan. 9. 

On Jan. 11, a second batch of classified documents was found at Biden’s Delaware home.

The following day, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the appointment of US Attorney Robert Hur as special counsel to investigate Biden’s handling of classified documents while he was still vice president.

GOP Rep. James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, said Sunday that the investigation on who may have had access to the classified materials already started. The sensitive files reportedly contain top-secret information on Iran, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom. 

Source: Yahoo News