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The
two-day poll that closed on Wednesday showed Americans were
divided along partisan lines in their views on the case, with
75% of Republicans seeing preferential treatment compared with
just 33% of Democrats.
Most respondents said the case would not affect their likelihood
of voting for the elder Biden next year when he is seeking
re-election.
U.S. Attorney David Weiss, a federal prosecutor appointed by
Republican former President Donald Trump, said on Tuesday that
Hunter Biden, 53, has agreed to plead guilty to two misdemeanor
charges of willfully failing to pay income taxes and to enter
into an agreement that could avert a conviction on a gun-related
charge.
Trump and his Republican allies charged that the plea agreement
amounted to special treatment for Biden's son. Weiss was one of
a few Trump-appointed prosecutors that Biden asked to stay on
after he took office in January 2021, to avoid the appearance of
tampering in politically sensitive investigations.
The younger Biden has worked as a lobbyist, lawyer, consultant
to foreign companies, investment banker and artist, and has
publicly detailed his struggles with substance abuse.
He will make an initial appearance in federal court in Delaware
on July 26, a court filing showed on Wednesday.
According to court filings, Hunter Biden received taxable income
of more than $1.5 million in 2017 and in 2018 but did not pay
income tax those years despite owing in excess of $100,000.
He is also charged with unlawfully owning a firearm from roughly
Oct. 12 to Oct 23, 2018, when he was using and addicted to a
controlled substance. For that charge, he entered a pretrial
diversion agreement, an alternative to prosecution that is
sometimes used to allow defendants to avoid prison time or a
criminal conviction.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll surveyed 1,004 U.S. adults nationwide and
has a credibility interval, a measure of precision, of about 4
percentage points.
(Reporting by Jason Lange in Washington; Editing by Scott Malone
and Matthew Lewis)
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