US President Donald Trump, who has cast himself as a relentless foe of illegal drugs, has pardoned former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez, freeing him from a 45-year sentence for conspiring to import tonnes of cocaine into the United States.
Trump’s extraordinary move risked weakening US credibility in Latin America, could embolden corrupt actors, and is likely to draw criticism that he is undercutting decades of US efforts to fight transnational drug networks.
Trump told reporters at the White House that he had freed Hernandez in response to pleas from Hondurans and that he felt “very good” about the decision. He asserted without evidence that Hernandez had been the victim of a witch hunt by the administration of his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden.
Democrats rebuked the Republican president, accusing him of hypocrisy in claiming to have stepped up the fight against the flow of illicit drugs into the United States while freeing a man convicted of using his office to aid drug traffickers.
Senator Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said evidence presented at Hernandez’s trial had established that the former president had “orchestrated a vast trafficking conspiracy” that raked in millions of dollars for drug cartels.