What is Honduras president accused of and why has Trump pardoned him?

Juan Orlando Hernandez, the former president of Honduras, has been released after President Donald Trump pardoned the man once described as the key figure in a drug trafficking scheme that flooded America with more than 400 tons of cocaine.

Trump said Hernandez, who was sentenced by a US court to 45 years in prison, is a victim of political persecution and has been “treated very cruelly and unfairly.”

The pardon surprised some experts, given the seriousness of the crime and the administration’s promised crackdown on illegal drugs flowing into the United States.

Here’s a look at Hernandez’s political career, his crimes, and why Trump pardoned him.

Hernandez first ran for president of Honduras, a country of 10 million people, in 2013 as a candidate for the conservative National Party. He ran again in 2017, in an election marred by allegations of fraud and violent protests.

Throughout his two terms in office, he maintained a friendly relationship with the United States. Former President Barack Obama called him one of the “excellent partners” in the migrant child crisis, and Trump backed him as the winner of the disputed 2017 election.

But Hernandez’s fortunes began to unravel in 2019.

US federal prosecutors accused him of accepting a $1 million bribe from notorious drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman for his first presidential campaign in exchange for protecting drug routes through Honduras.

The allegations surfaced in a separate case involving his brother, Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernandez, who was arrested in Miami in 2018 on charges of smuggling cocaine into the United States. The president at the time denied any involvement in his brother’s crimes.

Tony Hernandez was convicted in 2019 and sentenced to life in prison.

But the end of his brother’s trial was only the beginning of the former president’s legal problems.

Shortly after leaving office in 2022, he was arrested and extradited to the United States on drug trafficking and related weapons charges.

Hernandez’s federal trial lasted three weeks in 2024.

US prosecutors alleged he was a central figure in a drug trafficking scheme that lasted more than 18 years, transporting more than 400 tons of cocaine into the United States – the equivalent of about 4.5 billion individual doses.

“The people of Honduras and the United States must bear the consequences,” then-Attorney General Merrick Garland said.

Prosecutors detailed how Hernandez abused his position by protecting drug traffickers armed with machine guns and grenade launchers. In return, he received millions of dollars to support his political campaigns.

Prosecutors said several branches of the state were involved, including the Honduran National Police, which protected cocaine shipments as they moved through Honduras to the United States for distribution.

In some cases, drug traffickers linked to Hernandez committed violent crimes and murders to suppress rival gangs and grow their businesses, they said.

During the sentencing, Hernandez insisted that he was the victim of “political persecution.”

“Prosecutors and agents did not exercise due diligence in the investigation to learn the whole truth,” he wrote in a letter after his conviction.

Trump announced the pardon on Friday in a post on Truth Social, writing that according to “many people I respect very much,” Hernandez had been treated unfairly by prosecutors.

In the same post, he also endorsed Tito Lasfora for president of Honduras ahead of elections scheduled for Sunday. Asfoura ran under the same National Party ticket as Hernandez.

As of Tuesday, preliminary results showed the election too close to be called, forcing a manual recount.

Trump’s support for Asfour was not a surprise to many, given the ideological compatibility of the right-leaning National Party with the current US administration.

Trump also weighed in on the policies of other countries in the Western Hemisphere, such as Brazil and Argentina.

“We have seen the president warming up to right-wing leaders who he sees as supportive of some of his administration’s interests,” noted Jason Marczak, vice president and senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Center for Latin America.

But the decision to pardon Hernandez surprised some experts.

“It was hard for me to believe it, because there was a compelling case against Hernandez,” said Michael Shifter, an assistant professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Latin American Studies.

Shifter added that what he found most puzzling was the “contradiction” between the pardon and Trump’s stated policy of cracking down on drug trafficking.

Trump has repeatedly pledged to limit the flow of drugs into the United States, and has carried out highly controversial strikes on boats in the waters around Venezuela that his administration says are operated by drug traffickers.

More than 80 people have been killed in a number of attacks in the Caribbean Sea since early September.

At a White House news conference on Monday, press secretary Carolyn Leavitt said the charges against Hernandez were tainted by corrupt “over-prosecution” under President Biden.

In response to a question about whether the pardon undermines the US President’s campaign against “narco-terrorists” on the American continent, Levitt said that the goal is to “correct the mistakes” of the Justice Department under Biden.

“I think President Trump has been absolutely clear in his defense of the United States’ homeland to prevent these illicit drugs from reaching our borders whether by land or sea,” Leavitt added.

US media outlet Axios later reported that Hernandez wrote a four-page letter in October praising President Trump and asking for his case to be reconsidered “in the interest of justice.”

In the letter, he reportedly referred to the working relationship he had with Trump during the US president’s first term, and said his case “advanced only because the Biden-Harris Department of Justice pursued a political agenda to empower its ideological allies in Honduras.”

The newspaper also reported that Roger Stone, a lobbyist and longtime Trump advisor, told the US president that pardoning Hernandez would energize the National Party ahead of the Honduran elections.

Trump then told reporters on Sunday that he believed the former president’s impeachment “was set up by Biden.”

The Atlantic Council’s Marczak noted that Hernandez’s prosecution was the result of an independent investigation conducted by the US Department of Justice.

But he added that the decision to pardon Hernandez is consistent with the Trump administration’s “willingness to question decisions made during the Biden presidency.”