Why Did Trump Pardon a Cocaine Kingpin?

Joe Conason
Mon, 08 Dec 2025 17:21:06 -0800
Opinion

To ordinary MAGA voters in the American heartland — who may have witnessed the ravages of narcotics up close in their own families — the recent conduct of their favorite president must be troubling. While they may not know all the details, many have heard by now that President Donald Trump ordered deadly missile strikes against boats suspected of transporting drugs to the United States from Venezuela — and that he simultaneously pardoned Juan Orlando Hernandez, the former Honduran president serving 45 years in an American prison for trafficking tons of cocaine to our shores.

Even Fox News commentators have noticed a contradiction between Trump's wanton killing of alleged drug smugglers and his merciful beneficence toward the ex-boss of the biggest narco-state in the hemisphere. Yet Trump lapdogs in the right-wing media have tastefully refrained from examining exactly how this strange juxtaposition occurred, or the real reasons behind his actions.

So far, neither Trump himself nor Pete Hegseth, his self-styled secretary of war, have provided any evidence that the boats blown apart in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific were transporting cocaine, fentanyl or any other narcotics — or that the people killed aboard them had committed any crimes at all. To label these attacks as "war crimes" when we have no declared hostilities with any state in the region is to elevate them above incidents of piracy and murder, which they in fact appear to be.
Updated: Mon Dec 08, 2025

To ordinary MAGA voters in the American heartland — who may have witnessed the ravages of narcotics up close in their own families — the recent conduct of their favorite president must be troubling. While they may not know all the details, many have heard by now that President Donald Trump ordered deadly missile strikes against boats suspected of transporting drugs to the United States from Venezuela — and that he simultaneously pardoned Juan Orlando Hernandez, the former Honduran president serving 45 years in an American prison for trafficking tons of cocaine to our shores.

Even Fox News commentators have noticed a contradiction between Trump's wanton killing of alleged drug smugglers and his merciful beneficence toward the ex-boss of the biggest narco-state in the hemisphere. Yet Trump lapdogs in the right-wing media have tastefully refrained from examining exactly how this strange juxtaposition occurred, or the real reasons behind his actions.

So far, neither Trump himself nor Pete Hegseth, his self-styled secretary of war, have provided any evidence that the boats blown apart in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific were transporting cocaine, fentanyl or any other narcotics — or that the people killed aboard them had committed any crimes at all. To label these attacks as "war crimes" when we have no declared hostilities with any state in the region is to elevate them above incidents of piracy and murder, which they in fact appear to be.

And while polls show that many Americans would like to see proof of White House assertions about the boat strikes, many Americans are content to see other people's rights violated in the name of "fighting drugs."

If Trump is fighting drugs, why did he pardon and release a convicted gangster like Hernandez, whose crimes range from election tampering and official corruption to trafficking and murder? Well, Trump and his minions — including the pardoned MAGA felon Roger Stone, who successfully advocated Hernandez's release — insist that he was a victim of "lawfare" by the Biden administration.

Indeed, Trump has repeatedly claimed that the Biden Justice Department treated Hernandez "unfairly," without specifying how exactly he was wronged, and explained further that "many people" urged him to issue the pardon because the prosecution was a "horrible witch hunt."

Trump's account, echoing Stone, reflects precisely none of the known facts concerning the felonious Hernandez. Not long before his indictment, his brother Juan Antonio (Tony) Hernandez, a former Honduran congressman, was convicted in a massive cocaine trafficking conspiracy. Among the charges against brother Tony, aside from assorted assassinations, was accepting a million-dollar bribe — on behalf of his presidential sibling — from kingpin Joaquin Guzman, better known as "El Chapo." Nobody has suggested pardoning Tony yet.

Perhaps that's because Tony's indictment was brought during the first Trump administration, with a prosecution team led by Emil Bove III, who represented Trump himself in private practice and was lately appointed to a lifetime position on the federal bench by his former client after serving several months in a top Justice Department position.

The enormous trove of evidence against both Juan Orlando Hernandez and his brother extended far beyond the testimony of the drug lords, killers and thugs who had sponsored their political careers. Verified exhibits included ledgers kept by the traffickers with entries of payoffs and drug transactions with "JOH," identified as Hernandez by his initials; taped phone calls and other data that discussed cash payments to him in exchange for his protection of drug routes; plus photo albums of Hernandez with cartel leaders at soccer games and other events.

To believe Trump's fantasy version is to discount all the evidence compiled by his trusted attorney Bove — and to assume that the Republican judges who oversaw the indictments and prosecutions were all somehow corrupted by former President Joe Biden. The hard truth is that Biden and the State Department in his administration coddled Hernandez, just as previous U.S. presidents had tolerated Honduran corruption for "geopolitical" reasons. There was no persecution or witch hunt.

So why did Trump pardon Hernandez? The right-wing narco boss had powerful friends close to the U.S. president, far more powerful than the loudmouthed gadfly Stone. Top industrial and tech leaders, including Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen, and oil baron Kelcy Warren, all major Trump donors, have major interests in Honduras that benefit from Hernandez's National Party political machine.

It is a shadowy network that merits much deeper scrutiny — and possibly a congressional investigation when responsible and honest leadership returns to power.