{"id":17434,"date":"2025-12-02T11:37:33","date_gmt":"2025-12-02T19:37:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=17434"},"modified":"2025-12-03T07:07:23","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T15:07:23","slug":"honduran-drug-kingpin-and-former-president-walks-free-after-trump-pardon-national-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=17434","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Honduran Drug Kingpin and Former President Walks Free After Trump Pardon&#8221;, National Review"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/planetearthfdn.org\/news\">Back to News<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/author\/andrew-c-mccarthy\/\">ANDREW C. MCCARTHY<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>December 2, 2025 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>President Trump has followed through with his pardon of major narcotics felon Juan Orlando Hern\u00e1ndez, the former president of Honduras who flooded the United States with 400 tons of cocaine. It is a shocking abuse of power. Trump is currently (and lawlessly) using the trafficking of comparatively negligible amounts of cocaine as a pretext to fire missiles at vessels on the high seas off South and Central America, killing 83 people so far.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nationalreview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/hernande.jpg?fit=800%2C456&amp;ssl=1\" alt=\"\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Then\u2013Honduras President Juan Orlando Hernandez speaks in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, January 9, 2020.(Jorge Cabrera\/Reuters)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>I won\u2019t belabor the record with my contentions that the presidential pardon power is an anachronistic catalyst of corruption that should long ago have been repealed. (See, e.g.,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/2024\/12\/the-pardon-power-dont-mend-it-end-it\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">here<\/a>,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/magazine\/2021\/01\/25\/repeal-the-pardon-power\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">here<\/a>,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/2021\/01\/trump-does-his-part-in-scandalizing-the-presidential-pardon-power\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">here<\/a>, and&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/2025\/11\/the-autopen-presidency-is-a-pardon-scandal\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">here<\/a>.) I will, however, state the obvious: If, as seems increasingly likely, the Democrats retake control of the House in next year\u2019s midterm elections, the president\u2019s gross abuse of clemency authority will be an impeachment headliner. I doubt that the Republicans\u2019 only plausible defense \u2014 \u201cDemocrats did it too\u201d \u2014 will resonate much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/12\/02\/us\/politics\/hernandez-honduras-trump.html?smid=url-share\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">The&nbsp;<em>New York Times<\/em>&nbsp;reports<\/a>&nbsp;that the president issued a full pardon for Hern\u00e1ndez on Monday night. This morning, Hern\u00e1ndez left a federal prison in West Virginia, where he had been serving his&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.justice.gov\/archives\/opa\/pr\/juan-orlando-hernandez-former-president-honduras-sentenced-45-years-prison-conspiring\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">richly deserved 45-year prison sentence<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Trump\u2019s spin that Hern\u00e1ndez had been \u201cset up\u201d by the Biden administration is as laughable as it is appalling. While the case went to court during Biden\u2019s administration, it was aggressively investigated by the Justice Department in Trump\u2019s first term. And Trump\u2019s claim that Biden\u2019s prosecutors \u201cbasically said that [Hern\u00e1ndez] was a drug dealer because he was the president of the country\u201d is just astonishing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here is how federal prosecutors in Manhattan summarized the proof that persuaded a jury to convict Hern\u00e1ndez:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>According to court documents, from at least in or about 2004, up to and including in or about 2022, Hern\u00e1ndez, the former two-term president of Honduras and former president of the Honduran National Congress, was at the center of one of the largest and most violent drug-trafficking conspiracies in the world. During his political career, Hern\u00e1ndez abused his powerful positions and authority in Honduras to facilitate the importation of over 400 tons of cocaine into the U.S. Hern\u00e1ndez\u2019s co-conspirators were armed with machine guns and destructive devices, including AK-47s, AR-15s, and grenade launchers, which they used to protect their massive cocaine loads as they transited across Honduras on their way to the United States, protect the money they made from the eventual sale of this cocaine, and guard their drug-trafficking territory from rivals. Hern\u00e1ndez received millions of dollars of drug money from some of the largest and most violent drug-trafficking organizations in Honduras, Mexico, and elsewhere, and used those bribes to fuel his rise in Honduran politics. In turn, as Hern\u00e1ndez rose to power in Honduras, he provided increased support and protection for his co-conspirators, allowing them to move mountains of cocaine, commit acts of violence and murder, and help turn Honduras into one of the most dangerous countries in the world.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>It is notable that in 2020, moreover, Trump\u2019s Justice Department charged Nicol\u00e1s Maduro for doing, as president and then dictator of Venezuela, exactly what Hern\u00e1ndez did \u2014 in the words of the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.justice.gov\/opa\/page\/file\/1261806\/dl?inline\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">indictment<\/a>, conspiracy to \u201c\u2018flood\u2019 the United States with cocaine and inflict the drug\u2019s harmful and addictive effects on users in this country,\u201d for the purpose of \u201cusing cocaine as a weapon against America.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In fact, the indictment elaborates that it was part of Maduro\u2019s conspiracy to \u201ccoordinate foreign affairs with Honduras and other countries to facilitate large-scale drug trafficking\u201d; to use Honduras as a \u201ctransshipment point\u201d; and to create an \u201cair bridge\u201d for cocaine-packed flights between Venezuela and Honduras.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>These allegations are an essential part of the Trump administration\u2019s deployment of an American armada to conduct serial drone attacks on small boats. They are an essential part of why (as our&nbsp;<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/2025\/12\/the-venezuela-crisis\/\">editorial<\/a>&nbsp;today explains) the president himself is weighing whether to start a war with Venezuela over the regime\u2019s \u201cnarco-terrorism.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And yet, Maduro\u2019s Honduran partner in crime, Hern\u00e1ndez, walks free. A disgrace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/author\/andrew-c-mccarthy\/\">ANDREW C. MCCARTHY<\/a>&nbsp;is a senior fellow at National Review Institute, an NR contributing editor, and author of&nbsp;<em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Ball-Collusion-Election-Destroy-Presidency\/dp\/1641770252\/ref=sr_1_1?crid=331D84LA58OFZ&amp;keywords=ball+of+collusion&amp;qid=1564091785&amp;s=gateway&amp;sprefix=ball+of+coll%2Caps%2C121&amp;sr=8-1\">BALL OF COLLUSION: THE PLOT TO RIG AN ELECTION AND DESTROY A PRESIDENCY<\/a><\/em>.&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.twitter.com\/AndrewCMcCarthy\">@andrewcmccarthy<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Back to News By\u00a0ANDREW C. MCCARTHY December 2, 2025 President Trump has followed through with his pardon of major narcotics felon Juan Orlando Hern\u00e1ndez, the former president of Honduras who flooded the United States with 400 tons of cocaine. It is a shocking abuse of power. Trump is currently (and lawlessly) using the trafficking of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001004,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17434"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001004"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17434"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17434\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17444,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17434\/revisions\/17444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}