WASHINGTON – He conspired with drug kingpins moving massive amounts of cocaine into the United States − the equivalent, in the words of one federal prosecutor, of “billions of individual doses” − in an onslaught protected by machine guns, grenade launchers and assault weapons.
Millions of dollars in drug money and bribes in return fueled his rise in Honduran politics.
But when President Donald Trump pardoned the former president of Honduras, he claimed Juan Orlando Hernández was the victim of a Biden administration political hit job so egregious it warranted freeing him immediately from a 45-year U.S. prison sentence for conspiring to flood America with more than 400 tons of cocaine.
Honduras former President Juan Orlando Hernandez is escorted by authorities as he walks towards a plane of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration for his extradition to the United States, to face a trial on drug trafficking and arms possession charges, at the Hernan Acosta Mejia Air Force base in Tegucigalpa, Honduras April 21, 2022.
“Many of the people of Honduras, they said it was a Biden setup,” Trump said Nov. 30, in one of several comments justifying the pardon.
The pardon came as Trump weighed in on the Honduran presidential election and pushed for his preferred candidate, a member of the same conservative political party as Hernández.
Those familiar with the case say Hernández’s 2024 conviction was not pulled together hastily − or vindictively − by President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice.
They say he was a key player in a sinister scheme − and that his prosecution was built on more than 10 years of evidence from global investigations by dozens of U.S. federal drug agents and veteran prosecutors, and scores of witnesses and insider informants, according to U.S. government documents and a USA TODAY interview with a former key investigator on the case. The former official spoke on the condition of anonymity because of their active involvement in law enforcement efforts in the private sector and fear of political retribution.
One of the lead prosecutors on the sprawling investigation into Honduran drug trafficking and corruption, in fact, was Emil Bove, who, after he left the Justice Department in 2021, would become Trump’s personal defense lawyer, according to the former official. Trump later tapped Bove as his deputy attorney general and ultimately nominated him to a lifetime judicial appointment.
A decade of work: From frontline smugglers to drug kingpins
The case began in 2010, the former official told USA TODAY, with the investigation of clandestine cocaine flights from Venezuela to Honduras. Soon, Drug Enforcement Administration agents in Honduras and in the region began targeting smugglers and their logistical support network, he said, flipping some people into becoming undercover cooperators and building evidence against higher-ups.
Specialized DEA FAST units, or Foreign-deployed Advisory and Support Teams, were transferred from Afghanistan to Honduras to work with local authorities. That revealed extensive corruption involving police officials, congressional lawmakers and political figures, including provincial mayors, the former official said.
Over the next decade, DEA investigators and DOJ prosecutors arrested more than 40 traffickers and corrupt officials, painstakingly flying them to the United States – and bringing their evidence before grand juries in New York; Alexandria, Virginia; and Miami, the former official said.
Several of Hernández’s coconspirators were convicted first, including Hernández’s brother, Juan Antonio Hernández Alvarado, a former Honduran congressman sentenced to life in prison in March 2021.
Juan Carlos Bonilla Valladares, also known as El Tigre, the former chief of the Honduran National Police, pleaded guilty to participating in the cocaine importation conspiracy and was sentenced to 19 years in a U.S. prison in August 2024.
At Hernández’s own sentencing last year, U.S. Attorney Damian Williams for the Southern District of New York described him as having facilitated the smuggling of “an almost unfathomable” amount of cocaine, amounting to “billions of individual doses,” into the United States with his protection and support as president.
Hernández’s own role in the massive international scheme began as early as 2004 and continued at least until 2022, with him being “at the center of one of the largest and most violent drug-trafficking conspiracies in the world,” Justice Department court documents allege.
Hernández’s coconspirators used machine guns, grenade launchers and assault weapons, such as AK-47s and AR-15s, “to protect their massive cocaine loads as they transited across Honduras on their way to the United States,” as well as to safeguard their cash profits and to protect their drug-trafficking territory from rivals, DOJ records show.
In return, Hernández received millions of dollars of drug money and used it to fuel his rise in Honduran politics, the Justice Department said.
“In turn, 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 Justice Department said at his June 2024 sentencing in Manhattan.
Publicly, Hernández used his political office to vociferously promote anti-drug legislation and to pretend to be working with U.S. officials to fight drug cartels, prosecutors said.
But all the while, federal prosecutors said, “he protected and enriched the drug traffickers in his inner circle and those who provided him with cocaine-fueled bribes that allowed him to obtain and stay in power in Honduras.”
Following a three-week trial in Manhattan, a federal jury convicted Hernández in March 2024 for his leadership role in what the Justice Department called a decades-long drug trafficking conspiracy.
Pardon draws concern, skepticism
Trump’s pardon of Hernández, 57, has been greeted with skepticism.
The former Justice Department official involved in the case said Trump’s pardon of Hernández has caused shock and consternation among investigators and prosecutors. The official believes the pardon was driven by political lobbying.
Among those concerned are some Republicans who question how it fits in with Trump’s effort to stem the flow of drugs from Latin America to the United States. That campaign involves threatening military action against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, whom Trump has painted as a drug kingpin, and having the U.S. military blow up suspected drug boats, killing those aboard.
“Why would we pardon this guy and then go after Maduro for running drugs into the United States?” Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana posted on X on Nov. 30. “Lock up every drug runner! Don’t understand why he is being pardoned.”
More: Trump pardons cocaine kingpin who ruled Honduras
U.S. Rep. María Elvira Salazar, R-Florida, was also critical. “I would have not done that, but I’m not the commander in chief and I do not have the pen that grants the pardons,” Salazar told CNN on Dec. 1. “I do not know what happened.”
Congressional Democrats are now pressing for answers for what New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen described as Trump’s “reckless decision” to pardon a political leader who was “convicted of supporting one of the largest drug trafficking conspiracies in the world.”
“Hernández’s conviction last year finally held him accountable for all the Honduran and American blood on his hands and sent an unequivocal message: no drug trafficker is above the law, not even former presidents,” Shaheen, as the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement.
“That is precisely why all Americans should be outraged by President Trump’s pardoning of former President Hernández,” Shaheen said. “President Trump should explain how this makes America safer.”
While some Republicans have expressed concern, the majority of the party is unlikely to challenge Trump for exercising his pardon power in this case. Republicans control both houses of Congress and would almost certainly reject any effort to hold hearings on the matter or investigate the circumstances that led to the pardon.
The Justice Department referred questions about what prompted Trump to issue the pardon to the White House. It’s one of hundreds he has issued since beginning his second term in January.
Trump formally granted Hernandez “a full and unconditional pardon,” the ex-president’s attorney Renato Stabile said. Hernandez was released early Dec. 2 from the U.S. Penitentiary, Hazelton, a high-security prison in West Virginia.
“President Hernandez is extremely happy and relieved and incredibly grateful to President Trump for ending this nightmare, after spending nearly four years in jail without seeing his family,” Stabile said in a Dec. 3 statement to USA TODAY. “His main focus is how he can use this experience to propel positive change. He is remarkably upbeat and is as mentally tough as anyone I have ever met.”
What reason did Trump cite for the pardon?
The White House referred USA TODAY to Trump’s Nov. 30 comments aboard Air Force One, in which he described the case as another example of political weaponization by the Biden administration.
“It was a terrible thing. He was the president of the country, and they basically said he was a drug dealer because he was the president of the country,” Trump said. “And I looked at the facts and I agreed with them.”
A White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the case, told USA TODAY in an email that Hernández said there was virtually no independent evidence presented at trial, including any video, audio, financial records or details of meetings, bribes or assistance in trafficking efforts by the Honduran president.
Instead, the official said, the jury heard from cooperating witnesses and notoriously violent drug cartel leaders that Hernandez described as “professional liars.”
Trump’s longtime on-and-off political adviser, Roger Stone, told USA TODAY he had been advocating for a Hernández pardon for nearly a year, based on his review of the trial testimony and other factors.
Stone also said he received a long and “compelling” letter from Hernández asking the president for a pardon and “passed the letter on to Trump for his consideration” shortly before Trump vowed to issue the pardon.
In the letter, which Stone shared with USA TODAY, Hernández described himself as a fellow victim of “political persecution” by the Biden administration.
Stone said he wasn’t paid for his role in helping Hernández lobby for the pardon and “acted in the interest of justice and fairness.”
“In my view, [Hernández] was subjected to the same type of illegal lawfare by the Biden DOJ as Trump was,” Stone said.
Stone had also been lobbying Trump to pardon Hernández as a means of helping defeat the ruling party of Honduran President Xiomara Castro in last week’s election there.
Stone backs Nasry “Tito” Asfura, a staunchly right-wing candidate akin to “the shining examples of Nayib Bukele in El Salvador and Javier Milei in Argentina,” he wrote in his Stone Cold Truth column on Substack in January.
“Castro’s regime could be upended and Honduras liberated without firing a single shot or deploying a single troop in what would be a massive strategic victory for U.S. interests in the region,” Stone said.
Thanks in part to Trump’s endorsement, Asfura was leading Liberal Party candidate Salvador Nasralla by 515 votes in the latest count on Dec. 1, with both holding just under 40% of the vote in a tight race beset by problems with the results website, Reuters reported.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Honduran ex-president’s drug conviction based on decade-long probe
