Ex-Hounduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez was convicted of drug trafficking last year. (Photo: U.S. State Dept.)
Donald Trump’s intended “full and complete” pardon of former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández simply floored me. Every cell in my body was screaming in rage when I read this.
Hernandez was arrested in Honduras and extradited to United States during the first Trump term. His trial ended in New York in April 2024.
He was convicted by a federal jury of possessing weapons and conspiracy to import more than 400 tons of cocaine into the United States and received a sentence of 45 years.
Maybe what Trump found so admirable about Hernandez was that he acquired a second term as president in violation of the Honduran constitution that prohibited a successive term.
Not to be sarcastic, but maybe Trump wants to put his head together with Hernandez’s head without having to visit him in a federal penitentiary. Next stop, Mar A Lago.
Hernandez is not a good person. He was accused by US prosecutors and indicted of taking millions of dollars in bribes from drug cartels to allow them to do business. He took at least $1 million from the Guzman cartel.
Many, many people suffered because of the drugs that he allowed to be exported from Honduras.
The American Attorney General Merrick Garland accused him of supporting one of the largest and most violent drug rings in the world.
Ironically, Trump would like the world to think that he’s about to invade Venezuela and unseat its president, Nicolás Maduro. Trump claims his reasons are that Maduro is doing pretty much exactly what Hernandez was convicted of while he was the president of Honduras.
You can’t make this stuff up and you can’t make sense of it. But add to the mix is that Roger Stone has interceded on behalf of Hernandez with Trump.
Stone is not doing this out of the goodness of his heart, and there must be a quid pro quo. And it’s anybody’s guess whether some of that quid might be earmarked for later payment.
Members of the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) have reacted with utter disbelief to Trump‘s announcement that he’s going to pardon Hernandez.
One DEA agent asserted that Trump‘s pardon of Hernandez will destroy the credibility of the United States in the international community, although that ship has sailed.
The DEA, the Department of Justic (DOJ) and others spent the time and money to build a case against a drug kingpin, only to see the President of the United States turn his back on all of their work and pardon somebody of Hernandez’s status.
This Trump pardon simply makes no sense. A convicted drug tafficker is set free while Trump accuses Maduro of running a drug organization that does not even exist.
At the same time he’s flitting about the Caribbean killing boaters without evidence that they’re running drugs, not that evidence would legally justify these killings because it would not.
But he is more than pleased with himself to pardon a man convicted in a federal court in New York of conspiracy to import drugs into the United States.
He tagged his announcement with a statement, ‘’he was treated harshly and unfair.” This he said, was ‘’according to many people I greatly respect.” Roger Stone, perhaps?
Harshly, yes, that’s right. He was comvicted of conspiracy to import cocaine. Unfairly? He was treated as permitted by our system of justice.
Donald, it appears, would like to rewrite all of our laws to suit his sense of fairness or to justify his own actions.
It has to be bribery, or mental disillusionment. Maybe it’s both, but he’s hardly making the United States safer and he’s destroying the credibility of our premier law-enforcement agencies and our judiciary.
Its another strong example of why he is not competent to lead this country. Who can be OK with this?