US President Donald Trump on Friday made a major intervention into Honduran politics days before the Central American nation votes, pardoning a convicted ex-leader and threatening to cut US support if his preferred candidate loses.
Trump said he will pardon ex-president Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was convicted last year in a US court of drug trafficking charges and sentenced to 45 years in prison.
The stunning announcement came in a social media post proclaiming support for Nasry Asfura, the candidate of Hernandez's right-wing party in Honduras's presidential election on Sunday.
"If he doesn't win, the United States will not be throwing good money after bad, because a wrong Leader can only bring catastrophic results to a country, no matter which country it is," Trump said on his Truth Social platform.
Asfura, a 67-year-old construction magnate and former mayor of the Honduran capital, is running in a tight three-way race against a leftist lawyer and a fellow right-wing TV host in voting on Sunday.
Hernandez was president for two terms, from 2014 to 2022, and was extradited to the United States just weeks after leaving office.
A jury in New York convicted him in March 2024 of having facilitated the smuggling of hundreds of tons of cocaine -- mainly from Colombia and Venezuela -- to the United States via Honduras since 2004, starting long before he became president.
Former US president Joe Biden's attorney general, Merrick Garland, said after Hernandez's sentencing last year that he had "abused his power to support one of the largest and most violent drug trafficking conspiracies in the world."
Trump said in his social media post on Friday that Hernandez "has been, according to many people that I greatly respect, treated very harshly and unfairly," without elaborating.
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