There’s ample room for debate over which of Donald Trump’s many pardons stands as the worst, but the president’s clemency for former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández stands out for its cartoonish qualities. The details sound so spectacularly unrealistic that they seem concocted by a ham-fisted novelist to annoy readers.
In this case, Trump, despite all of his “tough on crime” chest-thumping, thought it’d be a good idea to pardon a notorious drug trafficker, who was convicted last year and sentenced to 45 years in prison. Even by 2025 standards, the developments were breathtaking: As The New York Times summarized, Hernández “orchestrated a vast trafficking conspiracy” that benefited drug cartels, even as Honduras grew poorer, more violent and more corrupt.
Hernández also boasted that he would “stuff the drugs up the gringos’ noses” and accepted a $1 million bribe to allow cocaine shipments to pass through his country.
Trump, however, freed him anyway. Politico’s Dasha Burns asked him about it during a lengthy White House interview this week.
“Well, I don’t know him,” the president said, referring to Hernández. “And I know very little about him other than people said it was like an Obama/Biden-type set-up, where he was set up.”
The Republican added that “very good people” (whom he did not name) asked him to pardon the convicted drug trafficker, “and I said I’ll do it.”
At this point, one could talk about how utterly ridiculous it is to see a sitting American president argue that he had effectively no idea whom he was letting out of prison. One could emphasize that Hernández’s prosecution was not a “set-up.” In fact, the prosecution was led in part by Emil Bove, a former member of Trump’s legal team who is currently a Trump-appointed federal judge.
But while those elements are important, there’s another part of this that deserves a closer look. Last week, when asked about the Hernández pardon during a Q&A on Air Force One, Trump, again referencing unspecified people, declared, “They said it was a Biden administration set-up. And I looked at the facts, and I agreed with them.” The contradiction is glaring: On Nov. 30, the president said he had examined the case and concluded the notorious drug trafficker deserved clemency. Then, eight days later, asked about the same case, Trump said he was clueless and insisted he knew “very little” about it. It can be one or the other, but it can’t be both. As for Hernández’s fate, shortly after the former president walked out of a high-security American prison thanks to Trump’s pardon, Honduras’ attorney general urged Interpol to execute an arrest warrant for Hernández, which was originally issued in late 2023 for fraud and money laundering. Watch this space.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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