Biden Approval at Highest Point in Over a Year as GOP Prepares House Probes

President Joe Biden's approval rating is at its highest level in more than a year, according to analysis by poll tracker FiveThirtyEight, as the administration faces probes from the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives.

The president's approval rating was 44.1 percent, while 50.9 percent of Americans disapproved of Biden. That comes after a number of polls were conducted in early January.

The last time Biden had approval of 44.1 percent in FiveThirtyEight's analysis was on October 19, 2021, when the share of Americans who disapproved of the president was 49.9 percent.

FiveThirtyEight analyzes a large number of polls from reputable polling companies and uses its own system of pollster ratings.

At 44.1 percent, the president's approval rating is up significantly over the past month. Biden enjoyed an approval rating of 42.5 percent on December 11, 2022 while disapproval stood at 52.4 percent.

Biden's approval rating appears to be on an upswing but it's been in negative territory since August 2021 when a majority of Americans disapproved of Biden for the first time.

The positive polling comes as the Biden administration faces investigations by the new Republican majority in the House, which has promised to probe the Biden family's business affairs and in particular the foreign business dealings of the president's son, Hunter Biden.

On Wednesday, Republican Representative James Comer, chair of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, sent a letter to Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen seeking information about the Biden family's financial affairs.

Comer's letter said the committee is investigating "President Biden's involvement in his family's foreign business practices and international influence peddling schemes."

"The Committee is investigating President Biden's knowledge of and role in these schemes to assess whether he has compromised our national security at the expense of the American people," Comer wrote.

The committee has requested information about Biden family transactions that were flagged as suspicious activity. Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) are routinely generated for larger financial transactions, which are flagged with the federal government. SARs are not evidence of wrongdoing.

Republicans are seeking testimony from former executives at Twitter as part of their probe of the social media site's handling of a story from The New York Post about a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden.

In a statement on Wednesday, White House spokesperson Ian Sams said: "In their first week as a governing majority, House Republicans have not taken any meaningful action to address inflation and lower Americans' costs, yet they're jumping out of the gate with political stunts driven by the most extreme MAGA members of their caucus in an effort to get attention on Fox News."

Newsweek has asked the White House for comment.