WASHINGTON – He conspired with drug kingpins moving massive amounts of cocaine into the United States − the equivalent, in the words of one federal prosecutor, of “billions of individual doses" − in an onslaught protected by machine guns, grenade launchers and assault weapons.
Millions of dollars in drug money and bribes in return fueled his rise in Honduran politics.
But when President Donald Trump pardoned the former president of Honduras, he claimed Juan Orlando Hernández was the victim of a Biden administration political hit job so egregious it warranted freeing him immediately from a 45-year U.S. prison sentence for conspiring to flood America with more than 400 tons of cocaine.
“Many of the people of Honduras, they said it was a Biden setup,” Trump said Nov. 30, in one of several comments justifying the pardon.
The pardon came as Trump weighed in on the Honduran presidential election and pushed for his preferred candidate, a member of the same conservative political party as Hernández.
