In pardon of narco trafficker, Trump destroys his own case for war
It appears more important to the White House that the
party of convicted Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández wins (last) Sunday's
volatile election.
Nov 29, 2025
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/trump-pardon-drug-trafficker/
The Trump administration has literally killed more
than 80 suspected drug smugglers by blowing their small boats out of the water
since September, but this week the president has reportedly decided to pardon
one of the biggest cocaine traffickers of them all.
If that doesn't make any sense to you, then join the
club.
The news that Trump is going to
pardon Juan Orlando
Hernández, the former president of Honduras who was sentenced to
45 years in U.S. prison just last year came as a shocker. The White House has said
repeatedly that drug traffickers are narcoterrorists who are waging war on
America, justifying
their killing the boats every time. Yet Hernandez was convicted of conspiring to import
500,000 kilos of cocaine into the United States and stuff it "right up the
noses of the gringos"
and Trump says "CONGRATULATIONS TO JUAN ORLANDO HERNANDEZ ON YOUR UPCOMING
PARDON."
While president, Hernández received millions of
dollars from trafficking organizations in Honduras, Mexico, and from notorious
drug lords like Joaquín Guzmán Loera, a.k.a. El Chapo, who was the former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel and
is responsible for the murder of some 34,000 people. In return, according to
prosecutors, President Hernández allowed vast
amounts of cocaine to
pass through Honduras on its way to the United States.
Prosecutor Jacob H. Gutwillig told jurors during the
trial that Hernández had accepted “cocaine-fueled bribes” from cartels and
“protected their drugs with the full power and strength of the state —
military, police and justice system.” Hernández ran the country from 2014-2022;
his National Party had been in power since 2009.
Sounds like the very type of menace — or terrorist —
that the Trump administration is trying to use as a justification for military
action in Latin America today.
"Former president Hernández was found guilty of
taking bribes from El Chapo and the Sinaloa Cartel to allow 400 tons of cocaine
to flow through Honduras into the United States, essentially running Honduras
like a narcostate," noted Quincy Institute research associate Lee
Schlenker.
"Trump accuses Venezuelan president Nicolás
Maduro of conspiring to flood the United States with deadly drugs through the
dubious 'Cartel of the Suns,' but far from pardoning Maduro or praising his
acolytes, like (he promises) with Hernández, Trump has brought us closer to a
U.S.-led military intervention in Latin America than we've been in over 35
years by threatening air strikes against Venezuelan territory," he added.
We assume the difference here is politics. And
ideology. Maduro is a socialist and doesn't want to do business with
Washington. Hernandez was tolerated if not preferred by previous U.S.
administrations from Obama through the first Trump White House, because he and
his National Party were business friendly, anti-communist, and supported by the
neoconservatives now gunning against Maduro.
While he was
useful, Hernandez played
the game and Washington turned a blind eye to his crimes which not only
included the drugs but human rights abuses against his people via the military
and police, election fraud, embezzling from the nation's social security system
and World Bank Funds, and even bragging at one point that he was siphoning off
international funds through phony NGOs.
Hernández left office in 2021 and wasn't
indicted until 2022 (by
the Biden DOJ), though he and his family were already being investigated during
the first Trump tenure. His brother Tony, a former Honduran congressman, was convicted
of drug trafficking in 2019 and
given a life sentence. DOJ prosecutors say he "was involved in all stages
of the trafficking through Honduras of multi-ton loads of cocaine destined for
the U.S."
In the same day he announced his would pardon Juan
Orlando Hernández, Trump said he was endorsing the
National Party candidate for president, Nasry “Tito” Asfura, who is running against what he
calls the "narco-communism" represented by center-left candidate Rixi
Moncada of the incumbent LIBRE party. This is laughable, says Schlenker,
because current president Xiomara Castro has done everything to curry favor
with Trump, including "tough-on-crime policies not too dissimilar from
those seen in neighboring El Salvador under Trump ally Nayib Bukele."
But Asfura and Hernandez have paid lobbyists in
Washington and if you think that doesn't make a difference then we have a block
of empty office space on K Street to sell you. According to Schlenker,
Hernández paid D.C. lobbying group BGR Group, which was a
leading donor to now Secretary of State Marco Rubio's 2016 presidential
campaign, over $600,000 in 2019 to win allies in Washington as he was under
investigation.
"Hernandez has strong supporters in Trump world,
including convicted (and later pardoned) Trump advisor Roger Stone, who has been urging Trump to pardon Hernández for months. Rubio, for
his part, has long sung Hernández's praises, thanking him for his work targeting drug trafficking,
as has Rubio ally, lobbyist, and former Trump
administration official Carlos Trujillo, who represents several Honduran clients who would likely stand
to benefit from a return to National Party rule," added Schlenker.
Trujilo was just on Capitol Hill talking down LIBRE
before he was called out by
Rep. Joaquín Castro for
his obvious conflict of interest.
The New York Times said Sunday's elections were
already beset by fears of "fraud, mass protests and even the threat of a
military crackdown," and Trump and other Washington neoconservatives
weighing in is adding another layer of volatility.
For those of us picking up on news this weekend that
Trump is boasting about "closing
the airspace" around
Venezuela only reinforces the suspicion that this is not about
"narcoterrorism" at all. If Trump wanted to rid the hemisphere of
drug traffickers, he wouldn't be letting them out of prison, period.
