Former Honduras President Juan Orlando Hernández was released from prison on Monday after President Donald Trump pardoned him of charges related to assisting drug traffickers.
“After nearly four years of pain, waiting, and difficult trials, my husband Juan Orlando Hernández RETURNED to being a free man, thanks to the presidential pardon granted by President Donald Trump,” former first lady Ana García de Hernández wrote early Tuesday on social platform X.
“Today we give thanks to God, because He is just and His timing is perfect,” she continued. “Thank you, Mr. President, for restoring our hope and for recognizing a truth that we always knew. To all the friends who supported us, to those who never stopped praying, defending the truth, and believing in justice: this miracle is also yours.”
Hernández was sentenced to 45 years in prison in July 2024 after being convicted of over 10 years of collaboration with drug traffickers seeking to move cocaine into the U.S., according to The Associated Press. Trump pardoned him last Friday, saying the former leader was “treated very harshly and unfairly.”
When asked aboard Air Force One why he granted clemency to the former leader, the president told reporters that he was asked by “many of the people of Honduras.”
“They basically said he was a drug dealer because he was the president of the country,” Trump said. “And they said it was a Biden administration set-up. And I looked at the facts and I agreed with them.”
The pardon came just days before Hondurans went to the polls to vote for a new president. The president also threw his support behind conservative candidate Nasry “Tito” Asfura “because the United States has so much confidence in him, his Policies, and what he will do for the Great People of Honduras, we will be very supportive.”
“If he doesn’t win, the United States will not be throwing good money after bad, because a wrong Leader can only bring catastrophic results to a country, no matter which country it is,” Trump added
One of Trump’s GOP allies disagreed with the pardon: Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.) Salazar said that she “would have not” pardoned Hernández.
But, she acknowledged, “I‘m not in the Oval Office.”
“I do know that right now what the president is doing with Venezuela is exactly correct for many reasons,” Salazar told CNN anchor Dana Bash on Monday, referring to rising tensions between the U.S and Venezuela in the Caribbean over alleged drug trafficking. “And that‘s why I stick to what I‘m telling you.”
The Florida Republican added, “Well, we are in an imperfect world, but I would have not taken that action.”
