Trump says he will pardon ex-Honduras president convicted of drug trafficking
US President Donald Trump has announced that he will pardon Honduran ex-president Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted of drug trafficking by a US court last year.
Trump made the announcement Friday in an article for Truth Social, praising the former president for his pardon, saying he had been “treated very harshly and unfairly.”
Hernández was convicted in March 2024 of conspiracy to import cocaine into the United States and possession of machine guns. He was sentenced to 45 years in prison.
In the same message, Trump also said he supports conservative candidate Tito Asfura in the Central American country’s upcoming general election on Sunday.
Hernández, a member of the National Party who served as president of Honduras from 2014 to 2022, was extradited to the United States in April 2022 to stand trial on charges of leading a violent drug trafficking conspiracy and helping to traffic 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 close match between Asfura, a former mayor of Tegucigalpa and now head of the National Party, Rixi Moncada, a former defense minister for the ruling left-wing FREE Party, and Salvador Nasralla, a television host for the centrist Liberal Party.
Trump criticized Moncada and Nasralla in his Friday message, writing that Nasralla is “a fringe communist” who is only running to split the vote between Moncada and Asfura.
Trump, in his Friday message, called Asfura a candidate who “defends democracy” and fights against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
The Trump administration has accused Maduro – whose re-election last year was dismissed as rigged by many countries – of being the leader of a drug cartel.
President Trump on Friday accused Maduro “and his narcoterrorists” of having seized Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
Honduras has been governed since 2022 by President Xiomara Castro of the LIBRE party, who had established close ties with Cuba and Venezuela.
But Castro maintained a cooperative relationship with the United States, agreeing to preserve a long-standing extradition treaty with the United States. His country is also home to a US military base involved in the fight against transnational organized crime in the region.
In August, the United States launched an anti-drug operation targeting boats it accuses of transporting drugs from Venezuela to America. Since then, more than 80 people have been killed in US strikes on suspected ships.
According to US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, the objective of “Operation Southern Spear” is to eliminate “narcoterrorists” from the Western Hemisphere. But legal experts have questioned the legality of the strikes, pointing out that the United States has provided no evidence that the boats were carrying drugs.
