President Trump announced on Friday afternoon his intention to grant “a Full and Complete Pardon” to a former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, who was found guilty by an American jury last year of conspiring to import cocaine into the United States in a sweeping drug case.
The pardon announcement came in a pair of social media posts by Mr. Trump, who has repeatedly weighed in on that country’s upcoming election on Sunday. He had already endorsed a candidate, a former mayor from the conservative National Party named Nasry “Tito” Asfura.
“Tito and I can work together to fight the Narcocommunists, and bring needed aid to the people of Honduras,” wrote Mr. Trump, who was spending the holiday weekend at his Mar-a-Lago resort.
Mr. Asfura, who belongs to the same party as Mr. Hernández, spent much of a highly contested race courting leaders in Washington, including members of Mr. Trump’s inner circle. The cause of Mr. Hernández, who was also convicted of possessing and conspiring to possess “destructive devices,” including machine guns, has been taken up separately by figures including Roger Stone, the conservative political operative.
The announced pardon of a leader convicted in a drug conspiracy case came as the Trump administration has launched an aggressive military campaign in the Caribbean that it describes as a counterdrug operation. More than 80 people have been killed since early September in attacks on boats that U.S. officials have said were carrying drugs. They have provided little evidence for that claim, and U.S. lawmakers from both parties and experts have questioned the legality of the strikes.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“CONGRATULATIONS TO JUAN ORLANDO HERNANDEZ ON YOUR UPCOMING PARDON,” Mr. Trump wrote in one of his posts on Friday, minutes after he returned to Mar-a-Lago following a day spent at his nearby golf club. “MAKE HONDURAS GREAT AGAIN!”
Mr. Hernández, a major figure in Honduras’s National Party, served as his country’s president from 2014 to 2022. When he won the presidency, he was seen as a willing, albeit flawed ally by the United States. But his first term was plagued by massive corruption scandals that led to widespread protests.
His tenure was also defined by the fraught election of 2017, when he secured a second term despite a constitutional ban on re-election. Widespread accusations of fraud set off demonstrations and post-electoral violence involving the military, a period of unrest in which nearly two dozen people were killed.
During his second term, Mr. Hernández’s rumored connections to drug traffickers escalated after his brother, a former lawmaker, was arrested on drug-trafficking charges in 2018 while visiting the United States.
During the ensuing trial, prosecutors asserted that while campaigning for his first term, Mr. Hernández had received bribes from drug traffickers, including $1 million from Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, the notorious former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel. The trial made clear that Mr. Hernández was under scrutiny by U.S. authorities along with his brother.
Less than a month after leaving office, in 2022, Mr. Hernández was arrested and extradited to the United States to face drug-trafficking and weapons charges.
He was convicted in March 2024 and later sentenced to 45 years in prison. “As president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández abused his power to support one of the largest and most violent drug trafficking conspiracies in the world, and the people of Honduras and the United States bore the consequences,” Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said at the time.
Since Mr. Trump took office this year, the former president’s family has attempted to portray his conviction as political persecution by the Biden administration. But although the former Honduran president was extradited and convicted when Joseph R. Biden Jr. was in office, the investigation of his ties with drug traffickers took place primarily during Mr. Trump’s first term.
A lead investigator in the case against Mr. Hernández’s brother was Emil Bove, then a prosecutor for the Southern District of New York and later one of Mr. Trump’s personal lawyers.
Mr. Stone, the political operative, has publicly defended Mr. Hernández. He has claimed on social media that Mr. Hernández had been “trapped” and was a “victim of a conspiracy” tied to the U.S. government — implying the extradition and prosecution were politically motivated.
The left-wing party now in power in Honduras, Libre, was formed by another former president, Manuel Zelaya, after he was ousted in a coup in 2009. His wife, Xiomara Castro, is the current president. Facing term limits, she has picked a lawyer and finance minister to succeed her.
The Zelaya-Castro family, who have themselves faced allegations of drug-trafficking ties, have been painted by the opposition in this year’s election as being pro-Venezuela. Mr. Trump, in one of his recent posts, called them “the Communists.”
In Honduras, many reacted with shock, including those who wondered how it would play into the elections this weekend.
“It will obviously stir up the same powerful negative sentiment seen in the 2021 elections that pushed Juan Orlando out of power,” said Leonardo Pineda, a Honduran analyst, who said that by linking the conservative candidate, Mr. Asfura, with Mr. Hernández, Mr. Trump could actually hurt his chances of winning.
Shawn McCreesh is a White House reporter for The Times covering the Trump administration.
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