Trump moves to pardon Honduran ex-president who turned his country into a “narco-state”
US President Donald Trump’s plans to pardon former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández belie the evidence US prosecutors used to convict the former head of state on cocaine trafficking charges.
According to Insightcrime.org, the pardon, which was announced by Trump via his Truth Social account just two days before the Honduran presidential election, has yet to be made official and casts the decision to prosecute Hernández in political terms.
“I will be granting a Full and Complete Pardon to Former President Juan Orlando Hernández who has been, according to many people that I greatly respect, treated very harshly and unfairly,” Trump stated in the November 28 post.
But US prosecutors, among them the Trump appointed-judge Emil Bove, spent years building a case against Hernández, which was based on the testimony of numerous drug traffickers, ledgers, and other evidence they presented in court during a three-week trial in 2024.
It remains to be seen if and when the pardon will move forward. For now, Hernández remains in a US federal prison with his release date set for June 2060, according to the Bureau of Prisons (BOP).
Hernández served as a congressman and later president of the National Congress before being elected to two consecutive terms as president of Honduras between 2014 and 2022. During that time, US prosecutors said he colluded with a wide range of high-profile drug traffickers to smuggle over 500 tons of cocaine into the United States in exchange for millions of dollars in bribes.
Shortly after leaving office in 2022, Hernández was arrested on drug trafficking and weapons charges and extradited to the United States. In 2024, he was found guilty after a three-week trial marked by extraordinary testimony from convicted drug traffickers and former associates. A judge sentenced him to 45 years in prison for his role in the drug trafficking conspiracy.
“For more than a decade, the defendant abused his political power to operate Honduras … as a narco-state,” US prosecutors wrote in court documents. At one point, Hernández even stated to an associate that he would “stuff the drugs right up the noses of the gringos.”
One of Hernández’s closest co-conspirators was his brother, the former congressman Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernández. Federal authorities arrested him in 2018 in Miami on drug and weapons charges. He was sentenced to life in prison after a jury convicted him of using his political connections to traffic cocaine into the United States.
Prior to his arrest, Hernández had for years been the US government’s top anti-drug ally in the region, despite the growing suspicions of his ties to the cocaine trade. His potential pardon contrasts with the US government’s current organized crime offensive in Latin America to combat the drug trade.
Since early September 2025, US forces have bombed more than 20 suspected drug trafficking vessels and killed at least 83 people. This has been accompanied by a military buildup in the Caribbean that many analysts suspect is aimed at removing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from office, whom US officials accuse of profiting from the drug trade.
Narco Testimony Details Millions in Bribes
Hernández’s conviction was in part secured through damning testimony provided by a number of high-profile drug traffickers at his trial in New York. Chief among them was Alexander Ardón, a convicted drug trafficker and former mayor of El Paraíso, a small but key trafficking point on the cocaine highway near Honduras’ border with Guatemala.
Ardón’s dealings with the Hernández family dated back to the late-2000s, according to court documents. For years, Ardón funneled money to the political campaigns of Juan Orlando and other National Party officials via Tony in exchange for protection for the cocaine shipments he moved alongside the former president’s brother.
Eventually, Ardón witnessed other drug traffickers deliver bribes destined for Hernández, most notably from Sinaloa Cartel kingpin Joaquín Guzmán Loera, alias “El Chapo.” During his trial, Ardón testified how Guzmán visited El Paraíso in 2013 to deliver a $1 million contribution to Hernández’s presidential campaign. Ardón was at the meeting and said Tony later delivered the funds to his brother’s presidential bid team.
This wasn’t all. Devis Leonel Rivera Maradiaga, the former leader of the Cachiros drug trafficking network, also testified that he paid Hernández $250,000 in drug proceeds to protect his cocaine trafficking activities. Tony was often the intermediary for these payments, leveraging his political contacts to connect members of the Cachiros and Valles criminal groups, as well as Víctor Hugo Díaz Morales, alias “El Rojo,” a once-powerful figure in the regional drug trade who became a key cooperating witness in the United States.
Drug Ledgers Seal Conviction
Perhaps the most damning piece of evidence prosecutors used against Hernández were drug ledgers discovered in June 2018 in the possession of a drug trafficker named Nery Orlando López Sanabria.
The ledgers first appeared in the 2019 trial of Tony Hernández. Prosecutors showed a number of entries detailing cocaine shipments he received and distributed. One from February 2018 listed shipping costs and a $1 million deposit for a 650-kilogram cocaine shipment sent by the former congressman.
Years later, the ledgers prosecutors also entered the ledgers into evidence in Juan Orlando’s 2024 trial. Several entries featured the letters “JOH,” the initials by which Hernández is known in Honduras. In an exclusive interview with InSight Crime, a girlfriend of López, who was arrested alongside him in 2018, confirmed that the entries referenced drug money paid to former President Hernández.
The evidence proved crucial to convicting both Tony and Juan Orlando. It gave prosecutors physical evidence that lent further weight to the testimony provided by convicted drug traffickers. But the fallout was swift. Shortly after the ledgers came to light in Tony’s trial, six MS13 gang members murdered López in a targeted ambush inside a Honduran prison, repeatedly shooting and stabbing him.
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