Trump’s pardon plan for ex-Honduran president revives cocaine-trafficking scandal

Trump offered no evidence of political targeting and suggested the sentence was excessive “because he was the President of the Country.”

Juan Orlando Hernández, the former president of Honduras, was once held up by several US administrations as a regional ally. But his 2024 conviction in a New York federal court painted a starkly different picture: Hernández had spent more than a decade enabling, protecting and enriching drug cartels, allowing more than 500 tons of cocaine to flow into the United States, the New York Times reported.

Prosecutors presented evidence showing that Hernández accepted money from major traffickers, including a $1 million bribe from Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, and used state institutions—the police, military and intelligence agencies—to safeguard cartel routes. Witnesses told the court that he openly boasted about overwhelming American authorities with cocaine shipments, once saying he would “stuff the drugs up the gringos’ noses.”

A sweeping case that shook Honduras

Hernández’s conviction followed a series of trials that exposed Honduras’s deep narco-political networks. The Post and Reuters documented how the country, already plagued by inequality and crime, became a primary cocaine corridor in the 2000s and 2010s.

His political rise, prosecutors said, was bankrolled by drug money as early as 2009, when he was still a lawmaker. By the time he won the presidency in 2013, his network of trafficker-alliances was entrenched. Photographs produced at trial showed him beside cartel members at public events. Drug traffickers testified that they paid him for protection from extradition and law-enforcement crackdowns, which became more dangerous as Honduras began sending cartel leaders to US courts.

His second term in 2017, marred by allegations of electoral fraud, sparked nationwide protests, military crackdowns, and dozens of deaths. “Fuera J.O.H.” (“Out with JOH”) became a national rallying cry, chanted by protesters and migrant caravans leaving the country.

US support even as suspicions grew

Despite the rising allegations, Hernández maintained strong ties with Washington. President Barack Obama praised his cooperation on migration. President Donald Trump recognised his disputed 2017 re-election and relied on him to curb migration flows. The Biden administration also continued engaging with him to stabilise the region.

But the façade collapsed when Hernández’s brother Tony was arrested in Miami in 2018 and later convicted of trafficking. Testimony at that trial linked Hernández directly to bribery, violence and transnational smuggling. By early 2022, just weeks after leaving office, he was arrested in Honduras and extradited to the United States amid fireworks and celebrations in Tegucigalpa.

A dramatic fall in a New York courtroom

In court, prosecutors presented a chilling portrait of a leader who ran Honduras like a narcostate. They displayed a machine gun engraved with Hernández’s name, detailed killings ordered to protect him, and documented bags of cartel cash delivered to politicians.

Hernández denied all wrongdoing, portraying himself as a victim of “political persecution.” During his 2024 sentencing hearing, he spoke for nearly an hour, reading from the Bible and quoting Edmund Burke and Martin Luther King Jr. Judge Kevin Castel sentenced him to 45 years, calling the crimes “breathtaking in scope.”

Hondurans outside the courthouse celebrated the verdict, waving signs reading “No clemency for narcopolitics.”

Trump’s unexpected pledge to pardon

On Friday, President Trump stunned legal observers by announcing he would pardon Hernández, calling him a victim of unfair prosecution. Trump offered no evidence of political targeting and suggested the sentence was excessive “because he was the President of the Country.”

The move would overturn one of the most significant drug-trafficking convictions in recent US history and could reverse years of US efforts to dismantle narco-corruption in Central America.

For many in Honduras, where violence and poverty flourished under Hernández’s rule, the pardon announcement reopened painful memories of a leader they once saw escorted onto a US extradition plane in handcuffs—a moment they believed marked the end of impunity.

Whether Trump follows through remains to be seen, but the political and diplomatic fallout is already rippling across the region.