Weighing the Political Impact of Donald Trump’s Indictments and Hunter Biden’s Plea Deal

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As House Republicans grapple with how to leverage their investigative powers to take on the Justice Department, our data shows there is more political energy on the right to probe the dealings of President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, than to examine the DOJ’s motivations for investigating former President Donald Trump. At the same time, our data finds near unanimity among Republican voters nationwide that Trump’s indictment over his handling of classified documents after leaving the White House was politically motivated.

Our view is that this leaves the GOP front-runner on solid ground to continue his attacks on the special counsel amid the primary, but it suggests risks for other GOP primary candidates who move to raise the issue against him. Meanwhile, views among independent voters highlight potential risks for those looking ahead to 2024.

General election watchers should also note that the average U.S. voter cares more about examining fentanyl trafficking and the Biden administration’s operations on the U.S.-Mexico border than either of the House’s DOJ investigations, suggesting that Capitol Hill’s focus on the political probes could be viewed as a distraction from the more pressing concerns of the wider electorate.

How Capitol Hill should consider the Trump, Biden legal scrutiny

Nearly half of Republican voters (46%) said Congress should make it a “top priority” to investigate Hunter Biden’s finances, compared with nearly a third who said it should focus on the motivations behind the DOJ’s classified documents probe or the special counsel’s ongoing scrutiny of Trump’s behavior following the 2020 presidential election.

That puts House Republicans in line with much of their base on using their investigative powers to spotlight the first son, who was the subject of salacious revelations about his own personal life and politically uncomfortable questions about his business dealings even before his deal with the Justice Department. Voters’ interest in the issue has droppedsince November, when 52% of Republicans said a Hunter Biden probe should be a top priority, suggesting interest in the issue may be waning on the right even if the share expressing heightened curiosity remains noteworthy.

Among the larger electorate, just over a quarter of voters said Congress should prioritize a Hunter Biden investigation, roughly matching the share who said the same seven months ago. That figure is slightly lower than the shares who want Congress to focus on the Justice Department’s Trump investigations.

而不是调查涉及两个主席dential front-runners, or any of the other hot-button subjects tested, our data shows Republicans would be on more popular turf if they were to focus their attention on elevating immigration, an issue on which their members of Congress have a 46% to 38% trust advantage over Democrats and Biden gets his highest disapproval rating (51%).

关于围绕边境线问题,近3 5嗓音起始时间ers want to see heavy attention paid to fentanyl trafficking into the United States, and just under half would prioritize a probe into operations at the U.S.-Mexico border. Both issues have been the subject of lesser-noticed hearings this year but have not gotten nearly the attention paid to the House’s rumblings concerning political probes.

Many voters question the DOJ’s Trump motivations

The criminal scrutiny of Trump and Hunter Biden does not appear to have done much to shape the contours of the 2024 race. Trump stillholds a major leadover other Republican candidates, and it has only widened since he was first indicted in New York this spring.

Looking ahead to the escalating GOP campaign, as the classified documents trial advances and prosecutors make a decision on the 2020 election interference probe, our data shows the Republican front-runner isn’t in unpopular territory with his claims that the Biden Justice Department is out to get him.

Voters are 13 percentage points more likely to approve than disapprove of a federal grand jury bringing charges related to Trump’s handling of classified documents. But when asked what they thought primarily caused the charges, they were only 4 points more likely to say it was due to evidence that he committed a crime than to interest in damaging his political career.

That gap is driven largely by Republican voters, who are 10 points more likely to say the Justice Department is motivated by politics than they are to disapprove of the charges — siding with Trump’s argument of a “rigged” system without fully shunning its conclusion.

The tensions facing Trump’s fellow candidates for the GOP nomination are clear. On the one hand, they will make up little ground in distancing the party from Trump’s claims of political persecution, as evidenced by the GOP electorate’s souring on contenders such as former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie in recent weeks.

On the other, pushing back more aggressively against the DOJ could pose risks for the GOP when looking ahead to the general election, and not just by alienating Democratic voters. Independent voters — who have helped fuel Trump’s general election advantages over his closest Republican challenger, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, when comparing their head-to-head standings against Biden — are more likely to side with the grand jury and against the president’s posture toward the Justice Department. This problem could be exacerbated as the documents-related trial starts to unfold and if other charges emerge against Trump.