Last Friday, Donald Trump promised in a message on his social network, Truth, to pardon former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, sentenced in the United States to 45 years in prison for his ties to drug trafficking. This Monday, one day after the celebration, in which Trump tried to influence in favor of his candidate, the conservative Nasry Asfura, Hernández was released from prison, according to the registry of penitentiary institutions. His wife, Ana García, confirmed it this Tuesday on her social networks.
“I will grant a full and complete pardon to former President Juan Orlando Hernández, who, according to many people whom I deeply respect, has been treated very harshly and unfairly,” Trump wrote last Thursday. “This cannot be allowed, especially now, that, with the electoral victory of
Asfura was running for the same political party as Hernández to remove the left-wing government from power. Two days after the polls closed, it is still not clear who won: the victory of one of the two right-wing candidates, who has not hesitated to proclaim himself the winner on social media, is decided in a vote-by-vote vote.
Hernández, known as JOH, was president of Honduras between 2014 and 2022 for the conservative National Party. There were years of collaboration with the United States in the fight against drug trafficking. Or at least, they apparently were. In 2024, he was sentenced in Manhattan to 45 years in prison for associating for more than a decade with drug traffickers who paid him bribes to ensure that more than 400 tons of cocaine reached the United States. Three years earlier, his brother Juan Antonio Hernández had been sentenced to life imprisonment for the same crimes. The Manhattan Prosecutor’s Office had accused JOH of receiving a million dollars from the Mexican kingpin Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán.
During the trial, evidence was provided such as a conversation in which JOH bragged about his lucrative crimes: “[Vamos a] “poking drugs up the faces of gringos.”
Criticism of double standards
The pardon has unleashed the obvious contradiction of the decision of the White House, which has been extrajudicially murdering suspected drug traffickers for three months in international waters of the Caribbean, while deploying a phenomenal, unprecedented military operation, with more than 12 warships, aircraft carriers and submarines and some 15,000 troops stationed in the area. The stated objective is the fight against Venezuelan drug cartels, although few interpret the imminence of an attack against Chavismo as anything other than an attempt to force a regime change in Caracas.
Trump told reporters on Sunday: “The people of Honduras really believe they were set up.” [con el juicio a JOH] and that is terrible. He was basically convicted for being president of his country… I have analyzed the facts and I agree [con quienes creen en su inocencia]”.
Trump’s interference in last Sunday’s elections in Honduras did not stop at his post on Friday. In another message, he wrote: “Yes Tito Asfura wins, the United States will give him great support, since it has a lot of confidence in him, in his policies and in what he will do for the great Honduran people. If he does not win, the United States will not waste its money, because a wrong leader can only bring catastrophic consequences to any country, no matter what it is.”
That was his in just 48 hours, as part of a strategy of insistence that was reminiscent of his efforts, apparently successful, to influence the results of the last Argentine legislative elections, in which he supported another ally, the ultra-liberal Javier Milei. In a post The previous Wednesday, Trump insisted that the only candidate with whom he could work to combat “drug trafficking” is Asfura—a construction businessman like Trump himself and former mayor of Tegucigalpa.
For the president of the United States, the other two candidates with options are “communists”, even though they are not. These are Nasralla and the candidate of the leftist Free Party and former Minister of Economy, Rixi Moncada.
On Monday, again in Truth, Trump once again intervened in the Honduran elections. He did so with a message in which he sows doubts about the scrutiny. Contrary to the official position of his Government, which had asked for patience, he wrote that the Central American country is “trying to change the results of its presidential election.” “If they do, it will be hell!” he insisted.
