Hunter Biden pardon: Miranda Devine says Americans shouldn’t be surprised by Biden’s ‘decision to lie’

New York Post columnist and author Miranda Devine said President Biden’s dishonesty about pardoning his son, Hunter Biden, is fitting end to the political career of a man who "lies as easily as breathing" and wants to protect himself on the way out. 

"Joe Biden's legacy, as he leaves office, it's in tatters," Devine told Fox News Digital. 

President Biden had long promised he wouldn’t pardon his son, but the commander-in-chief did an about-face that was announced Sunday night applying to offenses against the U.S. that Hunter Biden "has committed or may have committed" from Jan. 1, 2014 to Dec. 1, 2024.

Devine, whose recent book "The Big Guy: How a President and His Son Sold Out America" put a spotlight on corruption within the Biden family, doesn’t feel the news was surprising. 

"What's surprising is that anyone is surprised that Joe Biden is a liar. He has lied his way into office. He is renowned in his life as a plagiarist and a fabulous he was even caught plagiarizing when he was at university back in 1965. And one of his presidential bids failed due to his plagiarism," Devine said. 

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"He lied about his knowledge of his son Hunter's overseas business dealings before he got into office during the 2020 campaign," she continued. "And so, it's fitting that he's lying on his way out of office about whether or not he was going to give Hunter a pardon."

Devine noted a recent NBC News report that Biden "discussed pardoning his son with some of his closest aides at least since Hunter Biden’s conviction in June." While press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called the report "false" and insisted Biden made the decision over the weekend, Devine said the NBC News report jives with the president’s history. 

"It was a deliberate decision to lie to the American public and pretend that he wasn't going to pardon him. There were many ways he could have handled it, but he lies as easily as breathing, and so lying blatantly about something that he was planning to do just was instinctive," Devine said. 

"Rather than doing what anybody else would do and fudge or say, ‘Look, you know, I'm going to let the process carry on and work its way through the system, he just blatantly lied," she added. "I think that's because he has created this fake brand for himself that he's Honest Joe, the antithesis to Donald Trump."

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Devine pointed to claims that Biden would bring back decency, honesty, the rule of law and the notion that "grown-ups" were returning to the White House as further proof that the president has a problem with the truth. 

"In reality, he is everything that he accuses Donald Trump of being," Devine said. 

Hunter Biden, 54, has had a busy year in court, kicking off his first trial in Delaware in June, when he faced three felony firearm offenses, before he pleaded guilty in a separate felony tax case in September. But Biden didn’t only absolve Hunter Biden of the gun and tax convictions later this month, but of any crimes committed since 2014. 

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"This is a pardon that we've never seen before in history that stretches back 11 years. And of course, the 11 years that it stretches back covers all of the Ukraine grift, a lot of the China grift, and particularly in Ukraine 2014 when this pardon begins was, of course, a very important year for Ukraine, but also for the Hunter Biden influence peddling schemes because in February 2014 was the Maidan Revolution," Devine said of the Ukrainian Revolution.

The Maidan Revolution set the stage for then-Vice President Biden to lead an Obama administration delegation tasked with eliminating corruption in Ukraine while advocating for the country to reduce its reliance on Russian oil. 

"A few months later, Hunter Biden shows up being paid $1 million a year on the board of the most corrupt company in Ukraine," she said of Burisma Holdings. 

"Joe Biden was flying regularly into Kyiv, lecturing the Ukrainians on how terrible corruption was. Corruption is a cancer, he would say, but they all knew that his son was getting this dirty money. And so, that is all covered by the pardon," Devine said. "Joe Biden effectively was pardoning himself."

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Biden has acknowledged that when he was vice president, he successfully pressured Ukraine to fire prosecutor Viktor Shokin. At the time, Shokin was investigating Burisma Holdings, and at the time, Hunter had a highly lucrative role on the board receiving thousands of dollars per month. 

The then-vice president threatened to withhold $1 billion of critical U.S. aid if Shokin was not fired. Throughout the ordeal, Biden allies have claimed Shokin was fired because he had been too soft on corruption. 

Devine believes that Biden simply "doesn't want anyone poking around in Hunter's activities around Burisma and finding his own dirty fingerprints all over it." 

When reached for comment, the White House pointed to Biden’s previous statement regarding the pardon. Biden previously said that his son, who is a recovering addict, was "treated differently" because of who his father is.

"No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son — and that is wrong," the president said in the statement. "There has been an effort to break Hunter — who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution. In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me — and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough."

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Fox News Digital’s Paul Steinhauser, Brooke Singman and Emma Colton contributed to this report.