Hernandez’s 2024 conviction is based on more than a decade of global investigation by dozens of U.S. federal drug enforcement agents and veteran prosecutors, as well as testimony from numerous witnesses and informants.
President Trump pardons Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez
President Donald Trump pardoned Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was serving time in prison on drug charges.
WASHINGTON – He conspired with drug lords to transport tons of cocaine into the United States, amounting to “billions of personal doses,” in the words of one federal prosecutor, amid an onslaught of 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 Honduran president, he argued that Juan Orlando Hernández was the victim of a political blowback by the Biden administration so bad that he should be immediately released from his 45-year sentence for conspiring to flood the United States with more than 400 tons of cocaine.
“Many Hondurans said this was an orchestration by Biden,” President Trump said on November 30, in one of several comments justifying the pardon.
The pardon was made possible by President Trump’s consideration of the Honduran presidential election and his endorsement of his preferred candidate, who is a member of the same conservative party as Hernández.
People familiar with the case insist that Hernández’s 2024 conviction was not put together in haste or retaliation by President Joe Biden’s Justice Department.
They say he was the central figure in an evil plan – and that His indictment was built on more than a decade of evidence from a global investigation involving dozens of U.S. federal drug enforcement agents, veteran prosecutors and scores of witnesses and inside informants, according to U.S. government documents and a USA TODAY interview with a former lead investigator in the case. The former officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they are actively involved in private sector law enforcement efforts and fear political retaliation.
One of the lead prosecutors in the massive investigation into drug trafficking and corruption in Honduras was actually Emile Bove, who was slated to become Trump’s personal lawyer after leaving the Justice Department in 2021, according to a former official. Mr. Trump then nominated Bove to be deputy attorney general and eventually a judge for life.
10 years on the job: From frontline smuggler to drug lord
The case began in 2010, when an investigation into secret cocaine flights from Venezuela to Honduras began, former officials told USA TODAY. Soon, he said, Drug Enforcement Agency officials in Honduras and the region began targeting smugglers and their logistical support networks, with some becoming secret collaborators and building evidence against higher-ups.
A specialized DEA FAST unit, a foreign advisory and assistance team, was transferred from Afghanistan to Honduras to work with local authorities. This revealed widespread corruption involving police officials, members of parliament and politicians, including local mayors, former officials said.
Over the next decade, DEA agents and Justice Department prosecutors arrested more than 40 traffickers and corrupt officials, painstakingly transported them to the United States and presented evidence to a grand jury in New York. Alexandria, Virginia. And Miami, the former official said.
Several of Hernández’s co-conspirators were the first to be convicted, including Hernández’s brother Juan Antonio Hernández Alvarado, a former Honduran congressman who was sentenced to life in prison in March 2021.
Juan Carlos Bonilla Validares, also known as El Tigre, a former head of the Honduran National Police, pleaded guilty to participating in a cocaine import conspiracy and was sentenced to 19 years in a U.S. prison in August 2024.
At Mr. Hernández’s own sentencing last year, Damien Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said that with the protection and support of Mr. Hernández as president, he facilitated the smuggling of an “almost incalculable” amount of cocaine into the United States, representing “billions of personal doses.”
Hernández’s own role in the massive international scheme began as early as 2004 and continued until at least 2022, and he was “the central figure in the world’s largest and most violent drug trafficking conspiracy,” Justice Department court documents allege.
According to Justice Department records, Hernández’s co-conspirators used machine guns, grenade launchers, and assault weapons such as AK-47s and AR-15s to protect cash profits and protect drug-trafficking areas from rivals, as well as “to protect large quantities of cocaine as it passed through Honduras en route to the United States.”
In return, Mr. Hernández received millions of dollars in drug funds, which he used to fuel his rise in Honduran politics, the Justice Department said.
“As Mr. Hernández rose to power in Honduras, he increased his support and protection for his co-conspirators, who moved mountains of cocaine, committed acts of violence and murder, and helped turn Honduras into one of the most dangerous countries in the world,” the Justice Department said in a June 2024 sentencing in Manhattan.
Prosecutors say Mr. Hernández used his political office to vocally promote anti-drug legislation and pretended in public that he was cooperating with U.S. authorities to fight drug cartels.
But all the while, federal prosecutors said, “he protected and enriched his inner circle of drug traffickers and those who provided the cocaine-fueled bribes that enabled him to gain and maintain power in Honduras.”
After a three-week trial in Manhattan, a federal jury convicted Hernandez in March 2024 of his role in leading what the Justice Department called a decades-long drug trafficking conspiracy.
Amnesty raises concerns and skepticism
President Trump’s pardon of Hernández, 57, has been met with skepticism.
A former Justice Department official involved in the case said Trump’s pardon of Hernández has caused shock and confusion for investigators and prosecutors. The official believes the pardon was the result of political lobbying.
Some Republicans have questioned how the move fits in with President Trump’s efforts to stem the flow of drugs into the United States from Latin America. The campaign threatens military action against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, whom Trump has portrayed as a drug lord, and includes having the U.S. military blow up a suspected drug ship, killing its crew.
“Why pardon this man and then go after President Maduro for smuggling drugs into the United States?” Louisiana Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy wrote on X on November 30. “Lock up all the drug traffickers! I don’t understand why he would be pardoned.”
U.S. Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-Florida) was also critical. “I wouldn’t have done that, but I’m not the commander in chief and I don’t have the pen to issue a pardon,” Salazar told CNN on Dec. 1. “I don’t know what happened.”
Congressional Democrats are now seeking answers to what New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen described as President Trump’s “reckless decision” to pardon political leaders “convicted of supporting one of the world’s largest drug-trafficking conspiracies.”
“Mr. Hernández’s conviction last year finally acknowledges responsibility for all the Honduran and American blood on his hands and sends a clear message that no drug trafficker is above the law, not even a former president,” Shaheen, ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement.
“That’s exactly why all Americans should be outraged by President Trump’s pardon of former President Hernández,” Shaheen said. “President Trump should explain how this will make America safer.”
Although some Republicans have expressed concerns, the majority of the party is unlikely to object to President Trump’s use of pardon power in this case. Republicans control both chambers of Congress and will almost certainly veto any effort to hold hearings on the issue or investigate the circumstances that led to the pardon.
The Justice Department referred questions about what prompted President Trump to issue the pardon to the White House. This is one of hundreds he has issued since his second term began in January.
President Trump formally granted Hernandez a “full and unconditional pardon,” said Renato Stabile, the former president’s lawyer. Hernandez was released from Hazelton U.S. Penitentiary, a maximum-security prison in West Virginia, on early December 2.
“After spending nearly four years in prison without ever seeing his family, President Hernandez is extremely happy, relieved and incredibly grateful to President Trump for ending this nightmare,” Stabile said in a Dec. 3 statement to USA TODAY. “His main focus is how he can use this experience to drive positive change. He’s incredibly upbeat and mentally tougher than anyone I’ve ever met.”
What reasons did President Trump give for the pardon?
The White House referred USA TODAY to Trump’s comments aboard Air Force One on Nov. 30, in which he called the incident another example of political weaponization by the Biden administration.
“It was terrible. He was the president of the country. They were basically saying he was a drug dealer because he was the president of the country,” Trump said. “And I looked at the facts and agreed with it.”
A White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the case, told USA TODAY in an email that Hernandez said there was virtually no independent evidence presented at trial, including video, audio, financial records or details of meetings, bribes and assistance the Honduran president provided to the human trafficking operation.
Instead, the jury heard from cooperating witnesses and leaders of a notoriously violent drug cartel whom Hernandez described as a “professional liar,” officials said.
Roger Stone, a longtime and on-and-off political adviser to President Trump, told USA TODAY that he has been advocating for a pardon for Hernández for nearly a year after considering trial testimony and other factors.
Stone also said that he received a long and “persuasive” letter from Hernandez asking the president for a pardon, and that he “gave it to Mr. Trump for his consideration” shortly before Trump vowed to grant the pardon.
In a letter Stone shared with USA TODAY, Hernandez said he too was a victim of “political persecution” by the Biden administration.
Stone said he was not paid for his role in helping lobby for Hernández’s pardon and that he “acted in the interests of justice and fairness.”
“In my view, (Hernandez) received the same type of unlawful legal punishment from the Biden Justice Department that Mr. Trump received,” Stone said.
Mr. Stone had also lobbied Mr. Trump to pardon Mr. Hernández as a way to help defeat Honduran President Xiomara Castro’s ruling party in last week’s election.
Stone is backing Nasry “Tito” Asfura, a staunchly right-wing candidate similar to “the shining examples of El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele and Argentina’s Javier Milei,” he wrote in a Stone Cold Truth column published on Substack in January.
“Without firing a shot or deploying a single military force, Castro’s regime could be overthrown and Honduras liberated, which would be a massive strategic victory for U.S. interests in the region,” Stone said.
Thanks in part to President Trump’s support, Asfullah led Liberal Party candidate Salvador Nasrallah by 515 votes in the latest count on December 1, with both men holding just under 40% of the vote in a close race plagued by website issues, Reuters reported.
