The following is part of a series on Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez Was Framed by Biden’s DOJ before President Trump pardoned him.
On December 1, 2025, Donald Trump pardoned the former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández. He was in a US prison.
Hernández had served less than four years of a 45-year sentence when he was pardoned. He was 57.
Hernández walked out of FCI Hazelton on the day Trump signed the pardon.
The US Attorney for the Southern District of New York had convicted him in March 2024 of conspiring to import cocaine into the United States, along with two weapons charges connected to a bribe by Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
It was an odd shift in fortunes.
As President of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández had been a partner in the requests that American presidents made of Honduras during his eight years in office.
He extradited more drug traffickers to the United States than any Honduran president before him. He worked with the DEA, the FBI, and U.S. Southern Command.
He cooperated on migration, slowing the northbound flow when Washington asked. He kept Honduras aligned with Taiwan, despite years of Chinese pressure to switch.
He was an ally.
Then he left office after two terms in office.
Xiomara Castro and the Libre party came into power on January 27, 2022. The Libre party’s foreign policy orientation was the opposite of Hernández’s on issues that American officials care about.
Closer ties with Venezuela and Cuba.
Skepticism of the United States. And, 14 months after Castro took office, in March 2023, Honduras switched its diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to the People’s Republic of China.
Switching to China led to the closure of the Taiwanese embassy. It opened a Chinese one. Castro did it to bring Chinese state investment, Chinese intelligence presence, and Chinese strategic influence into a country 90 minutes by plane from Texas.
The post-Hernandez Honduran realignment is what American foreign policy had spent decades trying to prevent.
That didn’t stop the Biden DOJ from indicting Hernández on January 27, 2022 — the same day Castro was inaugurated, as if it was almost a tip of the hat to Castro and the Chinese.
This is part one of a multipart series.
