President Trump, like other politicians, sometimes does something unpopular to please his base. But what is the audience for Mr. Trump’s pardon of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández?
He was sentenced in 2024 to 45 years in prison, after a federal jury in New York found him guilty of participating in a conspiracy to traffic 400 tons of cocaine to the U.S.
“The jury heard the testimony of Juan Orlando Hernández, and saw right through his polished demeanor,” Judge P. Kevin Castel told the court during last year’s sentencing. “They saw him for what he was, a two-faced politician, hungry for power, who presented himself as a champion against gangs, murder, crime, and drug trafficking, but secretly protected a select group of drug traffickers.”
Those 400 tons of cocaine, transshipped via Honduras, were worth $10 billion in the U.S. “In 2013, El Chapo Guzman, head of the Sinaloa Cartel, paid a $1 million bribe to Hernández and his campaign, delivered directly to Hernández’s brother,” the judge said.
While the former Honduran leader wasn’t accused of a direct role in the conspiracy’s killings, “he knew and understood the violence that accompanies drug trafficking, and in facilitating trafficking, he knowingly facilitated the violence.”
That’s the voice of the federal judge who presided over the trial, saw the evidence, and supervised the jury.
So why did Mr. Trump decide to set Mr. Hernández free?
“I was asked by Honduras, many of the people of Honduras, they said it was a Biden set up,” Mr. Trump told a reporter Sunday on Air Force One. “They basically said he was a drug dealer because he was the president of the country. And they said it was a Biden Administration set-up, and I looked at the facts, and I agreed with them.”
Would Mr. Trump care to elaborate for a perplexed public, including Republicans on Capitol Hill?
The Trump Administration is saying that illegal drugs are a threat serious enough to justify U.S. military strikes on alleged trafficking boats in the Caribbean, and it’s also trying to push out Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro.
“Why would we pardon this guy and then go after Maduro for running drugs into the United States?” Sen. Bill Cassidy wrote on social media. “Lock up every drug runner! Don’t understand why he is being pardoned.”
Mr. Hernández pleaded for clemency in a sycophantic letter to Mr. Trump that is dated Oct. 28. “I have found strength from you, Sir, your resilience to get back in that great office notwithstanding the persecution and prosecution you faced, all for what, because you wished to make your country Great Again,” the Honduran wrote. “Like you, I was recklessly attacked by radical leftist forces.”
The White House denied that Mr. Trump saw this fawning message before he announced the pardon late last week, but the letter was reportedly passed along to him by Roger Stone, the Beltway gadfly whom Mr. Trump pardoned in the first term after a conviction for lying to Congress.
Meantime, the results of Sunday’s presidential election in Honduras remain too close to call. Mr. Stone had argued on his blog that a “well-timed pardon” for Mr. Hernández could help to prod the election in a direction favorable to American interests.
What a strange turn of events.
Perhaps Mr. Trump thinks he’s playing geopolitical chess, but he has a long record of high susceptibility to flattery, and his pardon without explanation undermines the rule of law and the prosecutors who put Mr. Hernández away.
Which convicted criminals will be the next to discover that praising Donald Trump’s magnificence is a get-out-of-jail-free card?
