Most Americans say Biden admin ethics ‘not good’ or ‘poor’

It’s not just Hunter.

Most Americans believe the Biden administration’s ethical standards are “not good” or “poor,” according to a new national poll released Thursday.

A majority of US adults (55%) surveyed by Gallup throughout July gave top White House officials a negative ethics rating — the lowest of any administration in recent history with the exception of former President Donald Trump.

The poll showed 42% of respondents gave the Biden administration a positive ethics rating, with 34% calling the current standards “good” and 8% calling them “excellent.”

Trump officials had the lowest ethics ratings of any presidential administration on record, with only 38% giving an “excellent” or “good” rating.

Biden, 80, began his presidency with an executive order that required government employees to sign pledges to “act in the interest of the American people and not for personal gain.”

Another pledge ordered his appointees to “uphold the independence of the Department of Justice” — a standard that congressional Republicans and federal whistleblowers say has not been upheld.

Notably, 41% of independents rated Biden officials’ ethics as substandard, while just 35% said the same of the Trump administration.

The polling shows a drift toward hyper-partisan responses to recent presidential administration. Just 6% of Republicans say Biden officials have acted ethically while in office, while 11% of Democrats said the same of Trump.

No commander-in-chief from former President Ronald Reagan to former President Barack Obama has ever received a negative ethics rating — though Obama and former President George W. Bush registered 50% ratings at one point.

Biden’s ex-chief of staff Ron Klain violated the Hatch Act last year and received a warning from the Office of the Special Counsel for reposting a political campaign message from an official government social media account.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre also ran afoul of the federal law prohibiting government employees from engaging in political activities to influence elections when she repeatedly used the term “MAGA Republicans.”

Biden has also faced accusations of ignoring ethics guidelines himself from Republicans and former government officials.

An FBI informant file sought by the House Oversight Committee and eventually released by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) alleges that the president and his son Hunter Biden took a $10 million bribe from the owner of Burisma Holdings during Joe’s vice presidency in exchange for ousting a prosecutor who was investigating the Ukrainian natural gas company — where Hunter was a board member.

IRS investigators have also alleged a cover-up by the Biden Justice Department during its five-year probe into the first son’s alleged tax crimes, pointing to instances when senior officials blocked charges and prevented certain investigative steps.

Biden has made shifting public statements about Hunter’s overseas business dealings since taking office in 2021, raising ethics concerns among GOP lawmakers about his involvement in his son’s affairs.

The first son’s second career as a painter has also sparked an ethics debate, as one patron of his work went on to be appointed to a prestigious presidential commission.

Walter Shaub, a former top ethics official in the Obama White House, has also blasted the president for not implementing the “most basic security protocols” in keeping classified documents at his former office in Washington, DC, and in the garage of his Wilmington, Del., mansion.

Only half of the US public (51%) gave George W. Bush’s administration a positive ethics rating in 2005 — a few years after the invasion of Iraq — compared with his officials’ 74% rating in 2002.

Officials for former President Bill Clinton and former President George H.W. Bush both received positive ethics ratings — 57% and 59% — by Americans in 1994 and 1989, respectively. 

The Reagan administration consistently had the highest ethics rating on record, with 67% considering officials’ conduct to be “excellent” or “good” before his re-election in 1984.

However, those ratings predated the Iran-Contra affair during Reagan’s second term, in which senior administration officials secretly pursued arms sales to Iran in the hope of using the proceeds to fund anti-Communist rebels in Nicaragua — as well as win the release of American hostages held by Hezbollah.

The Gallup poll surveyed 1,015 US adults July 3-27, with a margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points.