Then-Honduras President Juan Orlando Hernandez speaks in San Salvador, El Salvador.
Marlon Gomez/Con/LatinContent/Getty Images
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Marlon Gomez/Con/LatinContent/Getty Images
Then-Honduras President Juan Orlando Hernandez speaks in San Salvador, El Salvador.
Marlon Gomez/Con/LatinContent/Getty Images
President Trump has officially pardoned former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who US authorities said was at the center of one of the largest and most violent drug trafficking conspiracies in the world.
A White House official, not authorized to speak on the record, confirmed that the pardon had been granted.
Hernandez, who served two terms as leader of the Central American nation, was sentenced to 45 years in prison for conspiring to import cocaine into the United States.
However, pardoning such a high-profile convicted drug trafficker has drawn accusations of deception and hypocrisy from the Trump administration, while the president and his team are stepping up their military campaign against drug trafficking out of Venezuela.
Critics argue that Hernandez’s pardon undermines the administration’s claims that it is focused on ending drug trafficking. Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, called the decision “shocking.”
“He was the leader of one of the largest criminal enterprises ever convicted in American courts, and less than a year after his conviction, President Trump is pardoning him, which shows that President Trump doesn’t care about drug trafficking,” Kaine said on CBS’ ‘Face the Nation’ on Sunday.
Hernandez’s time in office briefly overlapped with Trump’s first term. At the time, Hernández received support from the Trump administration after joining a small group of nations and moving the Honduras embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Trump criticized Hernandez’s prosecution, telling reporters last week that people he respects told him that Hernandez was “treated very harshly and unfairly.”
One of those people is likely his longtime political adviser Roger Stone, who lobbied for Hernandez’s release. Stone shared on his radio show that he had a four-page letter from Hernandez claiming he was the victim of wrongful conviction and “legal action by the Biden-Harris administration.”
Trump teased the pardon in a social media post last week: “Congratulations to Juan Orlando Hernandez on your upcoming pardon,” he wrote… “Make Honduras great again!”
According to court documents, Hernandez abused his position to facilitate the importation of tons of cocaine into the United States. In return, he received millions of dollars in drug money from some of the largest and most violent drug-trafficking organizations in the hemisphere.
Judge P. Kevin Castell, who presided over the case, described Hernandez as a “power-hungry two-faced politician.” Former Attorney General Merrick Garland said that Hernandez “abused his presidency to operate the country as a narco-state where violent traffickers operated with almost complete impunity.”
Hernandez has long maintained that he is innocent of the charges. He was appealing his conviction while serving his sentence at the US prison in Hazleton, West Virginia.
This is not the first time that one of Trump’s pardons has been scrutinized. Since returning to office he has pardoned several political and business associates, leading to some allegations that Trump is running a pay-to-play scheme.
They include MAGA loyalists, a cryptocurrency executive tied to his family’s crypto firm and dozens of allies who tried to overturn his 2020 election loss to former President Joe Biden.
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