On Tuesday, Donald Trump granted pardon to Juan Orlando Hernández, the former president of Honduras sentenced in the United States to 45 years in prison on cocaine trafficking charges. It was a surprising decision, especially because it contradicted Trump's very aggressive attitude towards drug trafficking. For months he has been promoting military actions and bombings against boats of suspected drug traffickers in the Caribbean Sea, but at the same time he freed Hernández, who was in prison in the United States for having helped bring over 400 tons of cocaine into the country and was deemed by US judges to be at the center of "one of the largest and most violent conspiracies in the world to facilitate drug trafficking".

The pardon is the result of a long process of influence by Trump collaborators to whom Hernández is linked by various interests, mainly economic. The timing was not accidental either, but was part of Trump's attempt to influence the presidential elections in Honduras on November 30: Trump announced the pardon just two days before, and supported the conservative candidate of Hernández's party (the results have not yet been announced).

Honduras has around 10 million inhabitants and is the poorest and most corrupt country in Central America, with homicide rates among the highest in the world, the effect of the enormous power of criminal groups who are mainly responsible for managing drug trafficking from Mexico to the United States. Hernández, also known by his initials JOH, is 57 years old and a member of the National Party. He has been very influential in Honduran politics over the last 15 years and served two terms as president, between 2014 and 2022.

Meanwhile, the United States was investigating Hernández's involvement in international drug trafficking. In 2022, President Xiomara Castro (leftist) extradited him to the United States, and in the trial that followed the prosecutor's office demonstrated that Hernández's links with criminal groups had begun as early as 2009, when he was a member of parliament. Unlike many Honduran politicians, Hernández does not come from an upper middle class family but is the son of coffee farmers: his rise has been rapid, favored precisely by the support of drug trafficking groups.

In the trial it emerged that Hernández used the police and the army to favor groups close to him and block rival ones, that the proceeds of drug trafficking were used to finance his electoral campaigns, and that a member of a criminal group was killed in prison because he was considered dangerous to him. Witnesses belonging to various criminal groups admitted to having offered large sums of money to bribe and obtain favors from Hernández: the well-known Mexican drug trafficker Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán also paid a bribe of one million dollars.


Hernández had built strong ties in the United States especially during Trump's first term (2017-2021). He had approached the US right, proposing himself as an ally to block migrants, and had entered the financial and entrepreneurial circles. This allowed him to launch the project of free trade zones (ZEDE), a kind of futuristic city that was supposed to arise on the coast of Honduras. In those areas, US financiers would have been able to count on lower or no taxes, but also on less rigid labor laws and legal guarantees, to be defined together with investors.

Some of these areas have been partially built, presented as a Caribbean version of Hong Kong and financed by tech entrepreneurs close to Trump, such as Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen. After the end of Hernández's second mandate, however, the projects were blocked and the ZEDEs were declared unconstitutional: US investors filed a lawsuit worth 11 billion dollars, almost a third of Honduras' GDP.

In the United States, one of the most staunch supporters of the ZEDE is Roger Stone, a right-wing lobbyist and activist since the 1970s, and a long-time Trump advisor. Stone was also one of the most active in advocating for a pardon for Hernández. He and Congressman Matt Gaetz, a member of the most extremist wing of the Republican Party, brought the issue to Trump's attention and described the conviction as the result of a conspiracy between the US left and the new Honduran government, defined as "communist".

Hernández formally asked Trump to pardon him with a letter in which he highlighted the alleged similarities between his situation and that of the US president. According to him, both are victims of the "deep state" (the "deep state", a dark entity of bureaucrats and officials who conspire against someone or something), of a "legal conspiracy" and of a "political persecution". Trump accepted the request, without providing explanations or evidence of the alleged plot against Hernández.

How come Trump pardoned a well-known drug trafficking convict. The former president of Honduras was serving 45 years in prison for being involved in trafficking huge quantities of cocaine to the United States