What is the President of Honduras accused of? Why did Trump pardon him?

Former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández has been released from prison after U.S. President Donald Trump pardoned the man once seen as a key figure in a drug trafficking scheme that flooded the United States with more than 400 tons of cocaine.

Trump said Hernandez, who was sentenced to 45 years in prison by a U.S. court, was a victim of political persecution and was treated “very harshly and unfairly.”

The pardon surprised some experts, given the seriousness of the crime and the government’s commitment to combating the flow of illegal drugs into the United States.

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

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

During his two terms in office, he maintained friendly relations with the United States. Former President Barack Obama called him one of the “great partners” in solving the migrant children crisis, and Trump endorsed him as the winner of the controversial 2017 vote.

But Hernandez’s fortunes began to unravel in 2019.

U.S. federal prosecutors accuse him of accepting a $1 million bribe from notorious drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzman during his first presidential campaign in exchange for protecting drug routes through Honduras.

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

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

But the end of his brother’s trial marked only the beginning of the former president’s legal troubles.

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.

U.S. prosecutors argued that he was at the center of a more than 18-year drug trafficking scheme that shipped more than 400 tons of cocaine into the United States, equivalent to about 4.5 billion doses of cocaine.

“The Honduran and American people have suffered the consequences,” then-Attorney General Merrick Garland said.

Prosecutors detailed how Hernandez abused his power to shield drug traffickers armed with machine guns and grenade launchers. In exchange, he received millions of dollars to fuel his political campaign.

Prosecutors said multiple agencies in the country were involved, including the Honduran National Police, which was responsible for protecting cocaine shipments traveling through Honduras to the United States for distribution.

In some cases, drug traffickers linked to Hernandez committed violent crimes and murders to quell rival gangs and advance their careers, they said.

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

“Prosecutors and agents failed to exercise due diligence in their investigation to learn the full truth,” he wrote in a letter following his conviction.

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

In the same article, he also endorsed Tito Asfulla as president of Honduras ahead of Sunday’s election. Asfra and Hernandez are both National Party candidates.

As of Tuesday, preliminary results showed the election was too close to call, forcing a recount.

Trump’s support for Asfura did not surprise many, given the right-leaning National Party’s ideological alignment with the current U.S. administration.

Trump has also influenced politics in other countries in the Western Hemisphere, including Brazil and Argentina.

“We’ve seen the president’s close relationships with right-wing leaders that he believes serve some of his administration’s interests,” said Jason Malzak, vice president and senior director of the Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center at the Atlantic Council.

But the decision to pardon Hernandez also shocked some experts.

“It’s hard for me to believe because there are so many cases against Hernandez,” said Michael Shift, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Latin American Studies.

Shift added that what he found even more confusing was the “inconsistency” between the pardons and Trump’s announced policies to combat drug trafficking.

Trump has repeatedly pledged to curb the flow of drugs into the United States and has carried out controversial attacks on ships in waters around Venezuela that his administration says are driven by drug traffickers.

Multiple attacks in the Caribbean have killed more than 80 people since early September.

At a White House press briefing on Monday, press secretary Carolyn Leavitt argued that the charges against Hernandez were tainted by “over-prosecution” of corruption under President Joe Biden.

Asked whether the pardon undermined the US president’s campaign against “narco-terrorists” on the American continent, Levitt said the purpose of the move was to “right the wrongs of the judiciary under Biden.”

“I think President Trump has been very clear in defending the American homeland to stop these illegal narcotics from entering our borders by land or sea,” Levitt added.

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

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

The outlet also reported that lobbyist and longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone told the U.S. president that pardoning Hernandez would energize the national party ahead of the Honduras election.

Trump later told reporters on Sunday that he believed the prosecution of the former president “is a Biden conspiracy.”

Mr. Malzak of the Atlantic Council noted that the indictment against Hernandez was the result of an independent investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice.

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