Trump Frees Former Honduran President Convicted Of Flooding U.S. With Cocaine

A former Honduran president who was convicted of helping drug smugglers import 400 tons of cocaine into the United States walked free on Monday after receiving a pardon from President Donald Trump.

Juan Orlando Hernandez, who received a 45-year sentence last year, was released from a federal prison in West Virginia after writing a letter to Trump in late October, arguing that he was the target of a political prosecution and was set up by the Biden administration. Trump announced on Friday that he was planning on granting Hernandez “a Full and Complete Pardon.” The president said that “according to many people that I greatly respect,” Hernandez was “treated very harshly and unfairly.”

Hernandez’s wife confirmed on Tuesday morning that her husband was a free man.

“After nearly four years of pain, waiting, and difficult trials, my husband Juan Orlando Hernández RETURNED to being a free man, thanks to the presidential pardon granted by President Donald Trump,” Ana García de Hernández said.

Hernandez was convicted in a U.S. court of conspiring to import cocaine into the United States in what prosecutors called a “corrupt and violent drug-trafficking conspiracy,” CBS News reported. Hernandez was also accused of using money he received from drug trafficking “to enrich himself, finance his political campaigns, and commit voter fraud, including in connection with the 2013 and 2017 Honduran presidential elections.”

In his letter to President Trump pleading for mercy, Hernandez argued that his conviction was based on “uncorroborated statements from drug traffickers, one of whom even recorded a video exposing senior members of the Honduran radical left party, Libre, discussing bribes with traffickers, yet admitted during my rigged trial that they had no evidence to support their accusations against me.”

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Hernandez’s letter was given to Trump by the president’s adviser and longtime ally Roger Stone hours before the president said he was going to pardon the former Honduran president, The New York Times reported.

Trump’s decision to free a former Central American president who was convicted of a massive drug trafficking scheme was criticized by some on the Right and the Left, especially since Trump is currently taking out suspected Venezuelan drug runners and pressuring Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to curb drug trafficking into the United States.

“Why would we pardon this guy and then go after Maduro for running drugs into the United States? Lock up every drug runner! Don’t understand why he is being pardoned,” Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) said last week after Trump announced his plan to pardon Hernandez.

Trump told reporters on Sunday that “many of the people of Honduras said that it was a Biden setup.”

“I don’t mean Biden, look, Biden didn’t know he was alive,” Trump added. “But it was the people that surrounded the Resolute Desk, that surrounded Biden when he was there. … [Hernandez] 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.”

The U.S. investigation into Hernandez began in 2013, and he was indicted in early 2022. The indictment charges that between 2004 and 2022, Hernandez protected drug runners who trafficked hundreds of thousands of kilograms of cocaine into the United States, and, in return, Hernandez and other Honduran officials received millions of dollars. Drug cartels in Honduras have long worked with cartels in countries such as Venezuela and Colombia to transport drugs into the United States, according to the Justice Department.

Trump’s pardon of Hernandez comes as Honduras is in the middle of a close presidential election, with results showing a “technical tie” between right-wing candidate Nasry Asfura and liberal Salvador Nasralla. Trump endorsed Asfura, saying that the candidate has the “confidence” of the United States.

“If Tito Asfura wins for President of Honduras, because the United States has so much confidence in him, his Policies, and what he will do for the Great People of Honduras, we will be very supportive,” Trump wrote last week. “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.”