Previous posts have discussed the president's pardon power.
From a U.S. prison cell, Honduras' ex-president secured a likely pardon for drug trafficking thanks to a letter he penned praising President Trump — whom he called "Your Excellency" — and a persistent lobbying campaign by longtime Trump pal Roger Stone.
Why it matters: The surprise announcement of Juan Orlando Hernandez's looming pardon is a window into the unorthodox, norm-shattering way Trump grants clemency.
Driving the news: Trump announced Friday that he planned to pardon Hernandez ahead of Sunday's elections in Honduras, where the White House backed the right-wing National Party that Hernandez led as president from 2014-2022.National Party candidate Nasry "Tito" Asfura is narrowly leading a center-right candidate as votes are being counted in a three-way race, according to the BBC.
Zoom in: Shortly after Trump took office in January, Stone wrote three separate Substack posts calling for the pardon of Hernandez, who was indicted the day he left office in 2022 and extradited to the U.S. to face cocaine-trafficking and weapons charges.
Stone cast Hernandez as a victim of leftist "lawfare" in Honduras and in President Biden's administration.Stone told Axios that on Friday he reached out to Trump and reiterated those points. Stone claimed a pardon announcement would energize the National Party and called Trump's attention to Hernandez's four-page letter begging for clemency.
Hours later, at 4 p.m., Trump posted on Truth Social that he'd endorse Asfura. Less than 20 minutes later, he posted that he'd pardon Hernandez.
"It was a Biden setup," Trump told reporters Sunday about the case against Hernandez, who's serving a 45-year sentence.
Except that the first Trump administration launched the Hernandez investigation:
Jonah E. Bromwich at NYT:When President Trump pardoned the former leader of Honduras this week, he erased the crowning achievement of years of work by one of his own former criminal defense lawyers and top Justice Department officials, Emil Bove III.
Mr. Bove, a firm believer in the prerogatives of executive power, became known for defending Mr. Trump against several prosecutions, and his profile rose further when, at the Justice Department, he oversaw the firing of dozens of prosecutors and F.B.I. agents Mr. Trump perceived as enemies. In May, the president nominated him as a federal appeals court judge and the Senate confirmed him in July.
But before that, Mr. Bove was a hard-charging prosecutor in Manhattan bent on convicting members of a Honduran drug-trafficking conspiracy.
From 2015 to when he left the job in 2021, Mr. Bove helped lead the investigation that identified Honduras as a key conduit for cocaine shipments into the United States. The inquiry revealed the violence that had cleared a pathway for the drugs through Honduras, as the country’s officials mowed down anyone who sought to thwart them. And it ultimately led to the conviction in 2024 of President Juan Orlando Hernández, who prosecutors said had been at the center of the conspiracy.
