TEGUCIGALPA – Juan Orlando Hernández, the former leader of Honduras, once a key U.S. partner in combating drug trafficking, now finds himself on the cusp of reprieve through a possible pardon from President Donald Trump. Once seen as an emblem of presidential corruption in Central America, this development marks a potential shift in his relationship with the United States.

Hernández, who led Honduras for two terms, was handed a 45-year prison sentence in the U.S. last year. The conviction stemmed from his involvement in facilitating the transit of massive cocaine shipments through Honduras en route to the United States.

During the opening of his trial in February 2024, U.S. prosecutors revealed that Hernández had brazenly told drug traffickers that they would ensure “drugs would be pushed right up the noses of the gringos.”

Trump, however, has expressed disapproval of the legal actions taken against Hernández. The case, which also implicated Hernández’s brother during Trump’s initial tenure, prompted Trump to remark on Friday that trusted sources informed him of the “harsh and unfair” treatment Hernández received.

This potential pardon has stirred controversy, with U.S. Senator Tim Kaine, D-Va., a prominent critic of Hernández during his presidency and ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, labeling Trump’s move as “shocking.”

On Sunday, U.S. Senator Tim Kaine, D-Va., ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere and a Hernández critic while he was still president, called Trump’s decision to pardon Hernández “shocking.”

“He was the leader of one of the largest criminal enterprises that has ever been subject to a conviction in U.S. courts, and less than one year into his sentence, President Trump is pardoning him, suggesting that President Trump cares nothing about narcotrafficking,” Kaine said on CBS’ ‘Face the Nation.’

The latest reversal of Hernández’s fortunes rivaled only his fall in early 2022 from recently former president to shackled prisoner bound for a U.S. courtroom.

Hernández was suddenly thrust into Honduras’ national election where voters are electing a new president, Congress and hundreds of local positions on Sunday.

Had support of first Trump administration

While president from 2014 until January 2022, Hernández had the support of U.S. officials waging the war on drugs and some diplomats who did not see a better option. But less than three weeks out of office, no longer of use to the U.S. government, prosecutors moved for his extradition and the chance to make him an example in a region wracked by corruption.

Hernández had enjoyed support from the first Trump administration when the leaders’ terms overlapped, currying favor with actions like moving Honduras’ embassy in Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv.

But when the Biden administration entered in January 2021, talk turned to corruption in Central America as an important force driving emigration to the United States.

Days after Hernández left office in January 2022 – and still a week before his arrest in Honduras — the U.S. State Department publicized that it had added Hernández to its list of corrupt and undemocratic actors in July 2021.

Sentenced to 45 years in prison

Hernández was arrested at the request of the United States in February 2022, weeks after handing over power to current President Xiomara Castro.

Two years later, he was sentenced to 45 years in prison in a New York federal courtroom for taking bribes from drug traffickers so they could safely move some 400 tons of cocaine north through Honduras to the United States.

Hernández maintained throughout that he was innocent and the victim of revenge by drug traffickers he had helped extradite to the United States.

But prosecutors said Hernández had used Honduras’ military and police to shepherd drug shipments through the country, earning him millions of dollars that fueled his political rise from rural congressman to the presidency.

Judge P. Kevin Castel called him a “two-faced politician hungry for power.”

Trial witnesses included traffickers who admitted responsibility for dozens of murders. They said Hernández was an enthusiastic protector of some of the world’s most powerful cocaine dealers, including notorious Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, who is serving a life prison term in the U.S.

$1 million bribe to Hernández’s brother

U.S. prosecutors said Guzmán had paid a $1 million bribe to Hernández’s brother, Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernández, a former Honduran congressman who was sentenced to life in a U.S. prison in 2021 in New York for his own conviction on drug charges.

They repeatedly implicated the Honduran president during his brother’s 2019 drug trafficking trial, alleging that his political rise was fueled by drug profits.

Hernández, a businessman and former lawmaker, took office in January 2014 and built support largely on a drop in violence, which had reached breathtaking levels. Later, a friendly Supreme Court opened the door to his re-election, allowing Hernández to seek a second term, which he won in an election plagued by irregularities.

Honduras was described as a narco-state and a prosecutor on the brother’s case characterized it as “state-sponsored drug trafficking.”

Castel described the number of killings linked to the drug trade during Hernández’s political career as “staggering,” saying one drug trafficking witness admitted at the trial that he aided 56 killings and another said he was involved in 78 murders before he began cooperating with U.S. authorities.

Shortly after Trump announced his intention to pardon the ex-president, Hernández’s wife Ana García and their adult children gathered on the steps of their home in Tegucigalpa.

García thanked Trump, saying that Trump had corrected an injustice, maintaining that Hernández’s prosecution was a coordinated plot by drug traffickers and the “radical left” to seek revenge against the former president.