Donald Trump has accused Honduran officials of “trying to change” the outcome of the country’s presidential election after a technical glitch halted the release of vote counts for two right-wing candidates.
Virtual vote counting was slow and choppy before it was disrupted around noon on Monday. The electoral court said a technical problem was to blame and insisted that manual counting was continuing.
On his social networks, Trump accused officials of “trying to change the outcome” and warned that “if they do, they will pay a heavy price!”
It was the latest in a series of dramatic interventions by the US President. Before the vote, Trump had thrown his support behind Nasser “Tito” Asfura – who on Monday was only 515 votes ahead of his opponent, Salvador Nasrallah – saying that US support for the country was conditional on Asfura’s victory.
He also made an extraordinary pledge to pardon Asfura’s ally, former President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was convicted of drug trafficking in a New York court last year and sentenced to 45 years in prison for allegedly building a “cocaine superhighway to the United States.”
As election officials appealed for patience on Tuesday, Hernandez’s wife, Ana Garcia de Hernandez, revealed that the former president had been released from a US prison.
She wrote, “God is faithful and never fails! Yesterday, Monday December 1, 2025, we lived a day we will never forget. After almost four years of pain, waiting and difficult trials, my husband, Juan Orlando Hernandez, became a free man again thanks to a presidential pardon granted by President Donald Trump.”
Trump’s pardon has surprised many observers, who have questioned why the US President has used his “war on drugs” to overthrow Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro, while at the same time releasing a man convicted of such crimes.
In Honduras, the pardon has been seen as another attempt by the US President to interfere in the elections.
Leftist ruling party candidate Rixi Moncada accused Trump of “interventionism” and “imperial, direct foreign interference” in the electoral process. Moncada served as Finance Minister under current President Xiomara Castro, who could not run again because the presidential mandate is limited to one term.
Before the election, Trump claimed that Moncada was “a communist” and that her victory would hand the country over to “Maduro and his narco-terrorists”.
When results stopped being released on Monday, Moncada was trailing in third place with 19.16% of the vote. Asfura was at 39.91%, followed by Salvador Nasralla, also a rightist, at 39.89%.
Nasralla, a veteran politician and TV presenter who served as Castro’s vice president before launching his own presidential bid, was labeled by Trump as a “borderline communist” who was only running to split the vote between Moncada and Asfura.
The electoral court has up to 30 days to declare the results. All three candidates have expressed concerns about delays and urged more speed.
“Let’s not keep the country waiting,” Asfura said.
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