Trump says he will pardon ex-Honduras president convicted of drug trafficking
US President Donald Trump said he would pardon Juan Orlando Hernández, the former president of Honduras, who was convicted in a US court last year on drug trafficking charges.
Trump made the announcement in a post on Truth Social on Friday, congratulating the former president on his pardon and saying he was “treated very harshly and unfairly.”
Hernández was convicted in March 2024 of conspiracy to import cocaine into the United States and possession of a machine gun. He was sentenced to 45 years in prison.
In the same post, Trump also said he supports conservative candidate Tito Asfura in Sunday’s general election in the Central American country.
Hernández, a member of the National Party and president of Honduras from 2014 to 2022, was extradited to the United States in April 2022 to stand trial on charges of running a violent drug trafficking conspiracy and helping transport hundreds of tons of cocaine into the United States.
He was convicted by a New York jury two years later.
Polls show the Honduran election remains a contest between Asfura, the former mayor of Tegucigalpa and now leader of the National Party, Rixi Moncada, a former defense minister of the ruling leftist LIBRE Party, and television host Salvador Nasralla of the centrist Liberal Party.
Trump criticized Moncada and Nasralla in a post on Friday, writing that Nasralla was a “borderline communist” who was only running to split the votes between Moncada and Asfura.
In his post on Friday, Trump described Asfura as a candidate who “defends democracy” and fights against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
The Trump administration has accused Maduro, whose re-election last year was rejected by many countries as fraudulent, of being the leader of a drug cartel.
President Trump on Friday accused Maduro and his narcoterrorists of taking over Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
Since 2022, Honduras has been governed by President Xiomara Castro of the LIBRE Party, which has established close relations with Cuba and Venezuela.
However, Castro maintained a cooperative relationship with the United States, agreeing to preserve his long-standing extradition treaty with the United States. His country also hosts a US military base that targets cross-border organized crime in the region.
In August, the United States launched a counter-narcotics operation targeting boats it accused of transporting drugs from Venezuela to America. Since then, more than 80 people have died in US attacks on suspicious ships.
According to US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, the aim of “Operation Southern Spear” is to remove “narcoterrorists” from the Western Hemisphere. However, legal experts questioned the legality of the attacks, stating that the United States provided no evidence that the boats were carrying drugs.
