Donald Trump is threatening to destroy the Honduran economy unless the country elects the oligarch-run National Party. Now, he’s even pardoned the last party member to rule the country, who was convicted in 2024 of smuggling hundreds of tons of drugs into the US.
On November 28, US President Donald Trump Trump declared he will be pardoning former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was sentenced to 45 years in a New York prison in 2024 for his role in helping smuggle 400 tons of cocaine into the US in a drug-running scheme linked to the Sinaloa cartel. Hernandez, Trump wrote, had been “treated very harshly and unfairly.”
While Hernandez was President of Honduras, he initiated contracts worth over half a million dollars with Republican lobbying firm BGR Group, after his brother, Tony, was sentenced to life in prison for cocaine smuggling. In the time since, BGR has donated tens of thousands of dollars to the campaign of Marco Rubio, the Cuban American former senator who now serves as Trump’s Secretary of State.
As The Grayzone reported, the US Department of Justice indictment of Hernandez contained explicit and often shocking details of his role in transforming his country into the Western hemisphere’s premier narco-state. The US-backed president “wielded incredible influence and partnered with some of the most notorious narcotics traffickers in Honduras, allowing them to flourish under their control,” a DOJ prosecutor stated.
Hellbound and Down 