Just days before a tense presidential election in Honduras, President Donald Trump threw himself into the center of the race.
Trump not only pledged his support for the conservative candidate in Sunday’s vote — drawing criticism that he was interfering in another country’s election — he also said he plans to pardon a former Honduran president — a convicted drug trafficker who was sentenced last year to 45 years in a U.S. federal prison for smuggling hundreds of tons of cocaine to the United States and turning his country into a “narco state.”
Trump’s pledge to pardon Juan Orlando Hernández, who served as president of Honduras from 2014 to 2022 and was accused by U.S. prosecutorsof having “paved a cocaine superhighway to the United States,” appeared to contradict the stated goals of his administration’s military campaign to attack drug traffickers in waters near Latin America and end the flow of drugs. More than 80 people have been killed so far in strikes and the operation has raised fears of an imminent attack on Venezuela.
“It’s an abomination,” said a former Drug Enforcement Administration agent who worked on the Hernández case and spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak freely about a sensitive case. “Ludicrous to even consider, much less actually go through with.”
In Honduras, Trump’s endorsement of the conservative candidate Nasry Asfura, and his pledge to pardon Hernández, an Asfura ally, has injected the U.S. into a tight, potentially volatile presidential election. It marked Trump’s latest move to back ideological allies in Latin America; in October, he offered a $40 billion bailout package to Argentina in an effort to boost President Javier Milei’s partyin legislative elections.
Gustavo Irías, the executive director of the Center for Democracy Studies in Honduras, said Trump’s action “distorts the fragile Honduran democracy and escalates to a new level the political polarization of the country and the risk of an institutional crisis.”
Hondurans began voting Sunday morning and are choosing between three candidates in what polls suggest is a close race: Asfura, the former mayor of Honduran capital Tegucigalpa; Rixi Moncada, a former defense minister aligned with the current leftist government; and Salvador Nasralla, a populist television host.
Both Asfura and Nasralla had traveled to Washington recently to court the Trump administration, but Asfura ultimately won Trump’s backing, which came in a Truth Social post on Wednesday. Trump described Asfura as the “man who is standing up for Democracy.” Trump compared Honduras’s leftist candidate to Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, called Nasralla a “borderline Communist” and vowed to work with Asfura, nicknamed “Tito,” if he wins.
“Tito and I can work together to fight the Narcocommunists, and bring needed aid to the people of Honduras,” Trump said.
It’s unclear whether Trump’s actions will lure more voters toward Asfura or turn them away. Hernández remains a controversial figure in Honduras, and many voters might fear what his return could mean for a country that has long suffered from drug trafficking, organized crime and corruption.
Joaquín Mejía Rivera, a Honduran human rights lawyer, argued the move could backfire for Asfura.
“What Trump’s statement does is mobilize people to remember what it means to live under Juan Orlando Hernández’s regime,” Mejía said, “and it also links Nasry Asfura to Juan Orlando Hernández, even though he has tried to distance himself.”
U.S. prosecutors said Hernández used the police and military to guard drug shipments and shared sensitive U.S. law enforcement information with traffickers.
The former president could face charges in his own country. In response to the news of Trump’s potential pardon, Honduras’s attorney general said prosecutors in the country would be “obligated to take action … so that justice may prevail and impunity may be brought to an end.”
Multiple people in Trump’s orbit had recently taken interest in Hernández’s case. Roger Stone, the conservative political operative and Trump ally, said in a post on Xthat he had long advocated for a pardon in his case, and claimed Hernández “was framed by Biden for an alleged drug trafficking that never existed.” Former Republican congressman Matt Gaetz had also interviewed Hernández’s wife on his show and called the former president’s arrest “political.”
Since 2022, Honduras has been led by Xiomara Castro, the first female president in the Central American country and the wife of former president José Manuel Zelaya, who was ousted by the Honduran military in 2009.
Ahead of Sunday’s vote in Honduras, candidates and politicians on all sides had raised fears about potential electoral fraud and questioned the credibility of the country’s elections, heightening concerns that the losing candidate could dispute the results of Sunday night’s vote.
Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau had earlier called on the electoral authorities and the military to follow the country’s constitution and laws. He added that the U.S. would respond “swiftly and decisively to anyone who undermines the integrity of the democratic process in Honduras.”
Castro has accused the opposition of trying to plot an “electoral coup” while her opponents have accused the government of trying to manipulate the vote.
Ana María Méndez Dardón, director for Central America at the Washington Office on Latin America, a D.C. think tank, feared a disputed vote on Sunday could bring “a severe constitutional crisis” in the days ahead.
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