Majority of Americans Think Hunter Biden Story Was Ignored by Media: Poll

More than half of Americans believe the media purposely didn't report on the federal tax investigation into Hunter Biden until after the election as it would damage his father's change of winning, according to a poll.

A Rasmussen Reports telephone and online survey found that 52 percent of likely U.S. voters think news organizations ignored the story in order to help Joe Biden's campaign.

It was revealed on December 9 that Hunter Biden is indeed under investigation over his finances, including claims of money laundering and alleged business dealings with foreign countries, including China. He denies that he engaged in any wrongdoing.

The federal investigation was launched as early as 2018, but investigators did not reach out to Hunter Biden in the weeks prior to the election because of department policy surrounding elections that prohibits overt investigative acts.

Joe Biden is not implicated in the federal investigation.

The allegations were first made in November in the run up to the election by some news organizations such as The New York Post and heavily pushed by President Donald Trump.

However, several other spurious claims brought forward by Trump's attorney Rudy Giuliani involving the contents of Hunter Biden's laptop after it was recovered from a shop in Delaware remain unfounded.

Perhaps because of this, the poll reveals that nearly one third of Americans (32 percent) say the media originally ignored the story because they felt it was a "partisan hit job" against Joe Biden and his family.

However, 56 percent of people taking part in the survey say they still believe Joe Biden was "consulted about and perhaps profited" from his son's overseas business deals despite the president-elect not being implicated in the tax investigation.

The poll finds that 70 percent of voters say they have been closely following news reports about Hunter Biden's business dealings, with 38 percent saying they have been following it "very closely."

Among those who say they are following the story very closely, 76 percent say the media deliberately ignored it before Election Day to help Joe Biden, with 72 percent thinking the president-elect is likely to have been consulted about the businesses dealing any may have profited from them.

In a statement released after he was informed by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Delaware that he was under investigation, Hunter Biden said: "I take this matter very seriously but I am confident that a professional and objective review of these matters will demonstrate that I handled my affairs legally and appropriately, including with the benefit of professional tax advisors."

The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted December 13-14 by Rasmussen Reports.