Trump inaccurately stated the nature of the former Honduran president\u2019s arrest and conviction<\/a>: The U.S. didn\u2019t try Hern\u00e1ndez after his presidency because he sold drugs in Honduras but because he was deeply involved in the transit of illicit drugs into the U.S.<\/p>\n The situation is rare but not without precedent.\u00a0<\/p>\n The White House framed Trump\u2019s planned pardon as an effort to correct a miscarriage of justice. At a Dec. 1 press briefing<\/a>, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt criticized Hern\u00e1ndez\u2019s three-week jury trial as being scant on evidence.<\/p>\n After his conviction, a judge denied Hern\u00e1ndez\u2019s motion for a new trial<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n What was Hern\u00e1ndez convicted of doing?<\/p>\n Hern\u00e1ndez\u2019s presidency ran January 2014 to January 2022, during which time he told U.S. officials<\/a> he was working to combat drug trafficking. Trump praised<\/a> his efforts in 2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n In April 2022, the U.S. government indicted and extradited<\/a> Hern\u00e1ndez to the United States on drug- and weapons-trafficking charges. On June 26, 2024, District Judge P. Kevin Castel sentenced<\/a> Hern\u00e1ndez to 540 months in prison and 60 months of supervised release for cocaine importation and related weapons offenses.<\/p>\n The U.S. Justice Department said<\/a>\u00a0Hern\u00e1ndez had financed his political career with drug trafficking proceeds and had used his presidential authority to traffic hundreds of tons of cocaine to the U.S.\u00a0<\/p>\n At one point, the department said<\/a>, Hernandez declared that he wanted to “stuff the drugs right up the noses of the gringos.”<\/p>\n The prosecution included<\/a> testimony from witnesses, including former traffickers. Documents presented in the case said Hern\u00e1ndez facilitated the importation into the U.S. of more than 400 tons of cocaine \u2014 equivalent to about 4.5 billion doses \u2014 working with co-conspirators armed with machine guns, AR-15 rifles and grenade launchers.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Honduran military and the police carried out orders from criminal groups, according <\/a>to witnesses in Hern\u00e1ndez\u2019s trial.\u00a0<\/p>\n U.S. prosecutors said<\/a> Hern\u00e1ndez ended up receiving millions of dollars of drug proceeds from some of the largest and most violent drug-trafficking organizations in Honduras, Mexico and other countries. He then used those bribes to fuel his rise in Honduran politics, which enabled him to protect his co-conspirators, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n Hern\u00e1ndez\u2019s brother, Juan Antonio Hern\u00e1ndez Alvarado, a former member of the Honduran National Congress, received protection from the government under Hern\u00e1ndez\u2019s leadership. Hern\u00e1ndez also<\/a> received millions of dollars from “El Chapo,” the former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, Joaqu\u00edn Guzman Loera, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n Why was the U.S. able to try a foreign head of government?<\/p>\n Trump said<\/a> the U.S. singled out Hern\u00e1ndez because he was the president of Honduras. It is unusual but not unprecedented for a foreign president to be prosecuted.<\/p>\n Under international law, a sitting head of state or head of government enjoys “complete immunity” from prosecution in the courts of another country, said Anthony Clark Arend, a Georgetown University professor of government and foreign service who specializes in international law.<\/p>\n However, the restrictions are looser for former heads of state. Hern\u00e1ndez was weeks out of office at his U.S. extradition.<\/p>\n A former head of state or government is immune from another country\u2019s prosecution if the prosecution is about actions carried out in their official capacity, Arend said. But the U.S. was able to prosecute Hern\u00e1ndez because drug trafficking has historically not been considered an “official” duty.<\/p>\n Because he was facing drug-trafficking charges, “there would be no impediment under international law to trying him, a former president, for those charges,” Arend said.<\/p>\n Hern\u00e1ndez\u2019s prosecution “seemed to have legitimacy both in the U.S. and in Honduras,” said Daniel Sabet, a visiting fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University<\/a> who studies Central America. “Outside of his core supporters, the arrest was seen as legitimate.”<\/p>\n A Panamanian rips up a photo of Manuel Noriega during a street celebration on Jan. 4, 1990, in Panama City. (AP)<\/p>\n Such prosecutions are rare but not unprecedented, most notably the case of Manuel Noriega of Panama.\u00a0<\/p>\n In 1989, President George H.W. Bush sent U.S. forces into Panama to seize Noriega, the country\u2019s strongman, after his indictment by a U.S. grand jury on drug-related charges. (Noriega\u2019s status as head of government was contested in Panama at the time, and his status was not recognized by the U.S.)<\/p>\n After turning himself in and being extradited to Florida, Noriega was tried and convicted<\/a> on eight counts of drug trafficking, money laundering, and racketeering. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison. The prosecution was upheld<\/a> by a three-judge appeals court panel in 1997, turning aside Noriega\u2019s argument that his position as head of state should have preempted his prosecution.<\/p>\n Sabet also cited the case of<\/a> a former Ukrainian prime minister, Pavel Lazarenko, who was arrested<\/a> in the U.S. in 1999, charged with 53 counts of money laundering. He was convicted and sentenced to three years in federal prison.<\/p>\n PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the U.S. continued its military campaign against what the Trump administration calls “narco-terrorists” in the Caribbean, President…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67151,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[3668,32056,14690,139,141,140,38379,5559,2684,4494],"class_list":{"0":"post-67150","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-orlando","8":"tag-drug","9":"tag-hernandez","10":"tag-honduras","11":"tag-orlando","12":"tag-orlando-headlines","13":"tag-orlando-news","14":"tag-pardon","15":"tag-trafficking","16":"tag-trump","17":"tag-u-s"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67150\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/AP9001040162.jpg\"\/)
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