- Trump’s pardon of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández raises questions about U.S. drug policy, given Hernández’s conviction for trafficking massive quantities of cocaine into the United States.
- Hernández was found guilty of abusing his office to partner with violent drug cartels, protect cocaine shipments with armed police, and accept millions in drug money over two decades.
- Trump defended the pardon as correcting a “Biden administration setup,” while critics argue he is issuing too many pardons with little evidence.
President Donald Trump announced on Friday a presidential pardon for the currently incarcerated former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, calling into question what is the bottom-line U.S. policy on drugs.
Hernández was sentenced to 45 years in prison for trafficking more than 400 tons of U.S.-bound cocaine through Honduras — which amounts to more than 4.5 billion individual doses of cocaine, the Department of Justice reported.
Hernández served as president of Honduras from 2014 to 2022. Since his three-week, New York City-based trial in 2024, Hernández has been serving his 45-year sentence at the U.S. Penitentiary in Hazelton, West Virginia.
What was Hernández found guilty of?
In court documents covering about two decades, the Department of Justice concluded that Hernández “abused his powerful positions and authority in Honduras,” and his co-conspirators “were armed with machine guns and destructive devices including AK-47s, AR-15s and grenade launchers, which they used to protect their massive cocaine loads as they transited across Honduras on their way to the United States.”
The DOJ said Hernández received millions in drug money and benefitted from partnering with violent drug-trafficking organizations in Central and South America.
“As Hernández rose to power in Honduras, he provided increased support and protection for his co-conspirators, allowing them to move mountains of cocaine, commit acts of violence and murder and help turn Honduras into one of the most dangerous countries in the world,” the DOJ wrote.
Members of Hernández‘s conspiracy used the Honduran president’s position to more easily traffic drugs into the U.S. — to the extent of using “heavily armed Honduran National Police officers to protect their cocaine loads as they transited through Honduras towards the United States for eventual distribution.”
Hernández‘s brother, Juan Antonio Hernández Alvarado; the former chief of the Honduran National Police, Juan Carlos Bonilla Valladares; a former member of the Honduran National Police and Hernández’s cousin, Mauricio Hernández Pineda; and the cocaine trafficker, Geovanny Fuentes Ramirez, have pleaded guilty to participating in the cocaine importation conspiracy.
Trump’s reason for pardoning Hernández is ...
Aboard Air Force One on Sunday, Trump said he was “asked by Honduras (and) many of the people of Honduras” to pardon Hernández.
“They said it was a (former president Joe) Biden setup. I don’t mean Biden. Biden didn’t know he was alive, but it was the people that surround the Resolute desk, surround Biden when he was there, which was about, uh, very little time,” Trump said. “And the people of Honduras really thought he was set up, and it was a terrible thing.”
Trump continued, “He was the president of the country, and they basically said he was a drug dealer because he was the president of the country. And they said it was a Biden administration setup. And I looked at the facts and I agreed with them.”
When asked what evidence the president found that indicates Hernández is not guilty, Trump responded, “Well, you take a look. I mean, they could say that, you take any country you want. If somebody sells drugs in that country, that doesn’t mean you arrest the president and put him in jail for the rest of his life.”
“That includes this country, OK, to be honest. I mean, if somebody does something wrong, do you put the president of the country in jail? They said it was a Biden setup. It was a Biden administration setup,” Trump said, before switching the subject to the upcoming special election in Tennessee.
What are people saying?
The National Review‘s senior political correspondent Jim Geraghty wrote on Monday that he believes Trump is pardoning too many people with too little evidence warranting it, and it’s not a new problem.
“The Founders did not envision the pardon power as (Joe) Biden used it ... but what we’re seeing from Trump right now is no better,” he said.
Trump is “popping out pardons like a Pez dispenser for any slimeball who can get one of his underlings in front of the president to tell a sob story,” Geraghty wrote.
Others compare this pardon to the U.S. response to drugs coming in from Venezuela. Former Drug Enforcement Administration chief Mike Vigil told The Guardian, “It just shows that the entire counter-drug effort of Donald Trump is a charade.”
“He is giving a pardon to Juan Orlando Hernández and then going after (Venezuelan president) Nicolás Maduro. … It’s all hypocritical," Vigil said.