Trump pardon questioned after Venezuela attack

The Trump administration is facing new questions over the recent pardon of the former Honduran president. Juan Orlando Hernandez after the capture of the Venezuelan leader by the United States Nicolas Maduro Saturday and charge him with crimes related to drug trafficking.

Hernández in 2024 was sentenced of conspiring with drug traffickers and using his government position to help hundreds of tons of cocaine enter the United States. He was sentenced to 45 years in prison.

President Donald Trump pardoned Hernandez in November, saying in a job on his Truth Social account that he had been “treated very harshly and unfairly”.

Maduro was accused of narcoterrorist plot, as well as four other charges: conspiracy to import cocaine; possession of machine guns and destructive devices; and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday highlighted the apparent contradiction of Hernández’s pardon, as the United States brings similar accusations against Maduro, another head of state of a South American country linked to drug trafficking.

“I don’t deal with the pardon file, I’m not against it or for it, I haven’t looked at the file, so I can’t tell you about the dynamics that led the president to make the decision that he made,” Rubio said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“He looked at the record, he reviewed the arguments and he felt that the former president of Honduras had been treated very unfairly by the previous administration,” Rubio said.

Rubio said that “whether you agree with this decision or not… it doesn’t mean you leave Maduro in place.”

“The answer to this, whether you have a problem with it or not, is not to leave in play someone who has been indicted and who hasn’t even been brought to justice by the United States yet,” Rubio said.

Trump’s pardon of Hernandez was already under scrutiny before Maduro’s ouster. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement that the “The hypocrisy behind this decision is particularly blatant.”

“This same president recently pardoned former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted in a U.S. court of serious drug trafficking charges, including conspiring with narcotics traffickers while in office,” Warner said. “Yet the administration today claims that similar allegations justify the use of military force against another sovereign nation. It cannot be credibly claimed that drug trafficking charges require an invasion in one case, while granting a pardon in another.”

At a press conference Saturday after Maduro’s arrest, Trump was pressed for a pardon. He said Hernandez had been “persecuted in a very unfair way.”

“He was treated like the Biden administration treated a man named Trump,” Trump said, referring to his own criminal prosecution for allegedly hoarding classified documents and trying to overturn the 2020 election after leaving office following his first term as president.

Trump also cited his support for Nasry Asfura, the president-elect of Honduras, as another reason for his pardon.

“He’s also a member of the party of the man who won, so obviously people liked what I did,” Trump said. “And one of the reasons why that was done is because the ruling party felt very strongly that this man had been treated very badly.”

Trump also gestured to Rubio and other members of his national security team in explaining why he granted the pardon.

“I went to see a lot of people standing behind me and they felt that this man was being persecuted and very mistreated,” he said.