Despite the efforts of a dishonest president, his Democrat media stenographers and Deep State defenders, most refuse to be gaslit about the corruption of the Bidens and the authorities that have protected them.

A new CNN poll shows 61% of Americans believe then-Vice President Joe Biden was involved in son Hunter’s business dealings in Ukraine and China.

A majority, 55%, also believe the now-president has acted inappropriately regarding the so-called investigation into his son.

The poll numbers come amid rumblings of a pending impeachment inquiry this fall and news that special counsel David Weiss intends to indict Hunter on gun charges — a face-saving measure the prosecutor was forced into after the collapse of a sham plea deal that was a product of the very phony “investigation” the public ties to the president.

Both developments illustrate the dueling scandals at play transcending Biden’s actions as vice president: that the Bidens engaged in a corrupt, criminal and compromising multimillion-dollar international influence-peddling scheme and that the Department of Justice and FBI have conspired to cover up the scheme, obstructing justice to protect President Biden (and themselves).

Start with scandal one: Hunter Biden’s business dealings and Joe Biden’s involvement in them.

“Business dealings” is a euphemism for influence peddling. Joe’s involvement in his family’s influence-peddling scheme, seemingly bag-manned by Hunter, was definitional.

Hunter lacked the requisite knowledge or experience to have any business whatsoever with Ukrainian energy oligarchs — as he himself has admitted — Chinese financiers or any other such figures.

Millions flowed into the Biden family coffers, on down even to Joe’s grandchildren, through nearly two-dozen shell companies, from individuals and entities hailing from adversarial and/or corrupt countries around the globe — without the Bidens rendering any recognizable service.

The only thing Hunter brought to the table was political power — the “Biden brand,” on which the entire influence peddling scheme was based, headlined by patriarch Joe.

Maintaining that brand evidently involved Joe dining with Hunter’s “business” counterparts, popping into their meetings, writing college letters of recommendation on behalf of at least one of their kids and taking at least one call from Hunter when demanded by a client to get it out of a jam.

That client was Burisma. Here, Joe’s involvement would seem to be most direct and damning.

As Biden boasted publicly in 2018, two years prior he leveraged $1 billion in US aid — in a seeming dramatic policy shift — to entice Ukraine’s then-president to fire the prosecutor probing Burisma. An FBI informant has alleged the company’s founder had bribed Joe and Hunter each with $5 million to make that probe go away.

Irrespective of whether Joe took such a bribe, as the House Oversight Committee wrote in an August memorandum, “President Biden’s family is the vehicle to receive bribery payments.” Per the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, “payments to family members to corruptly influence others can constitute a bribe.”

Beyond the money that flowed to Biden’s family members, Hunter’s and Joe’s finances were commingled to a degree.

The key remaining questions then are: What other actions did Joe Biden take directly or indirectly benefitting his family’s international influence peddling operation? And to what extent did Joe directly or indirectly benefit?

Scandal two is the DOJ and FBI coverup of all this via their sabotaged investigation and sham prosecution of Hunter Biden.

DOJ’s new plan to indict Hunter on gun charges — but not yet on the Foreign Agents Registration Act or tax evasion and fraud — is itself an indirect indictment of a DOJ engaged in damage control and a continuation of the coverup given the nexus of the influence-peddling scheme associated with these offenses to Joe.

Only after IRS whistleblowers indicated DOJ and FBI systematically obstructed the Hunter probe — including preventing the pursuit of leads to Joe — while statutes of limitation on the most serious crimes lapsed, and Biden appointees prevented charges from being brought, did now-special counsel Weiss rush to negotiate a sweetheart deal with Bidens’ counsel.

And only when that deal collapsed was Attorney General Merrick Garland forced to grant Weiss the special-counsel authority he was not supposed to need to prosecute Hunter, preceding this planned indictment.

The key question that Congress must vigorously pursue is to what extent the Biden administration has meddled in the “case.”

The key question for Americans is whether they’ll make 2024 a referendum on the corruption of this ruling regime.

Benjamin Weingarten is editor at large at RealClearInvestigations.