On the menu today: President Trump issues another pardon that is just about impossible to defend on the merits; the New York Times belatedly discovers fraud and mismanagement in the Minnesota state government; and an offer you won’t want to miss. Also, for the first time in a long time, it’s a lot of fun to be a Chicago Bears fan.
Another Crazy Trump PardonBack in November 2018, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency arrested Juan Antonio Hernández, the brother of Honduras’s President Juan Orlando Hernández, in Miami, accusing him of being involved in “large-scale” drug trafficking into the U.S. for more than a decade. The prosecution was directed by then-U.S. attorney Geoffrey Berman, who had been appointed to his position by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Berman volunteered for Trump’s 2016 campaign and later for his transition committee.
During the trial, it became clear that Juan Antonio Hernández’s illegal smuggling of drugs into the U.S. was heavily facilitated by the resources of the Honduran government, headed by his brother:
Hernández played a leadership role in a violent, state-sponsored drug trafficking conspiracy. Over a 15-year period, Hernández manufactured and distributed at least 185,000 kilograms of cocaine that was imported into the United States. Hernández commanded heavily armed members of the Honduran military and Honduran National Police; he sold machineguns and ammunition to drug traffickers, some of which he obtained from the Honduran military; he controlled cocaine laboratories in Colombia and Honduras; he secured millions of dollars of drug proceeds for Honduras’s National Party campaigns in connection with presidential elections in 2009, 2013, and 2017; and he helped cause at least two murders. Hernández made at least $138.5 million through his drug trafficking activities, money he was ordered to forfeit in connection with today’s sentencing. . . .
Juan Orlando Hernandez was named president of the congress in early 2010. [Juan Antonio] Hernández . . . took advantage of National Party protection to continue transporting huge quantities of cocaine. Once or twice a month in 2010, Juan Antonio] Hernández sent Ardon Soriano cocaine shipments consisting of approximately 300 kilograms; and once a month in 2011 and 2012, Juan Antonio] Hernández sent Ardon Soriano maritime cocaine shipments ranging in size from 700 to 1,600 kilograms.
In March 2021, Juan Antonio Hernández was sentenced to life in prison. The evidence presented in the trial indicated Honduras’s president, Juan Orlando Hernández, was up to his eyeballs in cocaine smuggling as well.
In July 2021, under the Biden administration, the U.S. put Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández on the United States’ Corrupt and Undemocratic Actors list, which made him ineligible for a visa. In February 2022, the U.S. Department of Justice requested his extradition to face drug trafficking and weapons charges, and Honduras authorities arrested him.
After a three-week trial, a jury found Hernández guilty of conspiring to import cocaine into the United States and of possessing and conspiring to possess “destructive devices,” including machine guns.
During the trial, prosecutors convinced a jury that Hernández and his co-conspirators “trafficked more than 400 tons of U.S.-bound cocaine through Honduras during Hernández’s tenure in the Honduran government. This amounts to well over approximately 4.5 billion individual doses of cocaine.” Prosecutors said Hernández was “at the center of one of the largest and most violent drug-trafficking conspiracies in the world.”
The president allegedly boasted to an associate that he was going to “stuff the drugs right up the noses of the gringos.”
On June 26, 2024, 55-year-old Juan Orlando Hernández was sentenced to 45 years in prison. Prosecutors had sought a life sentence.
And now, after serving less than two years of his sentence, President Trump is letting him out.
“I will be granting a Full and Complete Pardon to Former President Juan Orlando Hernandez who has been, according to many people that I greatly respect, treated very harshly and unfairly,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Friday.
On Sunday, on Air Force One, reporters asked Trump about the decision:
Q: Can you explain more about why you would pardon a notorious drug trafficker?
President Trump: Well, I don’t know who you’re talking about. Which one?
Q: Juan Orlando Hernández.
Trump: Well, I was told, I was, uh, asked by Honduras, many of the people of Honduras, they said it was a Biden setup. I don’t mean Biden. Biden didn’t know he was alive, but it was the people that surround the Resolute desk, surround Biden when he was there, which was about, uh, very little time. And, uh, the people of Honduras really thought he was set up, and it was a terrible thing.
Uh, he was the president of the country, and they basically said he was a drug dealer because he was the president of the country. And they said it was a Biden administration set up. And I looked at the facts and I agreed with them.
Q: What evidence can you share that he was set up and that he wasn’t?
Trump: Well, you take a look. I mean, they could say that, uh, you take any country you want. If somebody sells drugs in that country, that doesn’t mean you arrest the president and put him in jail for the rest of his life.
Q: Mr. President, can I just clarify. Do you think the U.S.—
Trump: That includes this country, okay, to be honest. I mean, if somebody does something wrong, do you put the president of the country in jail? They said it was a Biden set up. It was a Biden administration set up. And you have a big race going on this week, you know, next week. Uh, I think it’s gonna be a very important race.
This is the big sleazy pardon of Binance founder Changpeng Zhao all over again. Apparently, all it takes is someone telling President Trump that someone in federal prison was “targeted by Biden” or “is being treated very unfairly” and Trump asks where he can sign to issue a full pardon. No review, no examination of the facts of the case, no contemplation of the likely consequences. Trump doesn’t even acknowledge that Hernández has committed crimes against the American people.
You notice Trump never elaborates on how these figures have been treated very harshly and unfairly.
You can’t say you stand for “law and order” and then issue a pardon like this. You can’t say you’re “tough on crime” and then issue a pardon like this. You can’t say you oppose drug traffickers and then issue a pardon like this.
Elsewhere at NR, examining the Trump administration’s recent moves on Venezuela, Joshua Treviño and Melissa Ford of the America First Policy Institute write, “For those of us within the Latin American security and policy space, Venezuela’s regime is the archetype of a cartel-state synthesis, un estado de narco, in which state and criminal activity exist in cooperation, integration, and mutual reinforcement.”
A cartel-state synthesis, hm? What would you call the Honduran government when Juan Orlando Hernández was running it?
Apparently, the threat of drug smuggling is so dire — such a clear and present danger, one might say — that the U.S. Navy is justified in shooting the survivors of drug smuggling vessels some days, and then on other days returning them to their home countries.
(When the House and Senate Armed Services Committees come calling to investigate those strikes, the Secretary of Defense had better have a better response than AI-generated children’s book covers.)
But at the same time, the threat of drug smuggling is so mild and inconsequential that the U.S. can let Juan Orlando Hernández out of prison and shrug off the consequences.
A whole lot of Republicans are screaming bloody murder about President Biden’s use of the autopen for some of his issued pardons and commutations, and they are right to do so.
The Founders did not envision the pardon power as Biden used it, describing the kind of prisoners he wants to pardon, having his staff compile a list, and then having the autopen sign them without reviewing each case. I don’t know if any federal judge would conclude those pardons are invalid, but I don’t begrudge anyone for filing a suit, just to see what the judges say.
But what we’re seeing from Trump right now is no better. The president is popping out pardons like a Pez dispenser for any slimeball who can get one of his underlings in front of the president to tell a sob story.
It doesn’t matter what you think of the president, and whether you’ve talked yourself into believing that Donald Trump is tough, smart, shrewd, always playing seven-level chess, and so on. What his actions are demonstrating is that he’s a naïve, gullible, amoral chump who can be easily sweet-talked into actions that amount to an abuse of his presidential powers. And that’s the generous interpretation of his actions.
Why Is President Trump Pardoning a Notorious Convicted Drug Trafficker?
Forward with the Idiocracy!