Notorious Drug Trafficker Officially Walks Free Thanks to Trump

Donald Trump has officially pardoned former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, according to the ex-leader’s attorney. He was released from a federal prison in West Virginia early Tuesday.

Hernández was sentenced to 45 years in prison for playing a central role in what the Biden administration deemed to be “one of the largest and most violent drug-trafficking conspiracies in the world.” Though Trump is blaming the conviction on Biden, much of the investigation began during Trump’s first term, with his now Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove acting as one of the lead investigators on the case.

The investigation found that Hernández moved mountains of cocaine between 2004 and 2022, facilitating the influx of more than 400 tons of the highly addictive substance into the U.S.

Under the protection of a machine gun-wielding, grenade launcher-toting gang, Hernández received “millions of dollars of drug money from some of the largest and most violent drug-trafficking organizations in Honduras, Mexico, and elsewhere.” The politico used that money to fuel his political ambitions, pay off bribes, and extend legal protections toward himself and his drug trafficking co-conspirators during his time in office.

The decision to release him comes just days after Hernández penned a sugar-coated letter to the U.S. president in which he claimed to be a victim of “political persecution” by the Biden administration, reported The New York Times.

Trump announced Friday that he planned to grant Hernández a “full and complete pardon,” though a White House official told the Times that the decision had nothing to do with the letter. Trump, at the time, had not seen the appeal, the official said on the condition of anonymity.

“This was a clear Biden over-prosecution,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. “He was the president of this country. He was in the opposition party. He was opposed to the values of the previous administration, and they charged him because he was president of Honduras.”

Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s approach to curbing narcoterrorism—which has involved bombing small boats in the Caribbean suspected of smuggling drugs without evidence—has run afoul of international law. It has also placed an outsized target on drug mules, potentially the lowest and least significant participants on the drug trade totem pole.

The decision to wipe Hernández’s record clean appears to be a seismic departure from the Trump administration’s rhetoric on drug trafficking. After celebrating the deaths of several people killed in an airstrike in September, Vice President JD Vance claimed that “killing cartel members who poison our fellow citizens is the highest and best use of our military.” That rule apparently does not apply to the head honchos of the drug trade—or to the White House.

This story has been updated.

Donald Trump’s social media addiction appeared to reach a new level last night.

The president made more than 150  posts to his Truth Social account late Monday night, resharing praise for his deportation agenda, fake news about Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, complaints about California Governor Gavin Newsom, and claims that Nancy Pelosi was the real mastermind behind the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol Building.

Freelance journalist Yashar Ali shared a screen recording of Trump’s social media binge, documenting the trove of late night posts. The scroll lasts nearly five minutes.

“TRUTH SOCIAL IS THE BEST! There is nothing even close!!!” Trump wrote hours later, after the sun had come up.

That level of social media fixation puts Trump in line with America’s teens, who are spending hours on social media to the detriment of their mental health, according to a 2024 report by the American Psychological Association.

Social media addictions can be a horrible catch-22, feeding anxiety for users when they’re gravitating to the platform to distract from other stressors. But with so many scandals on his plate, it’s not clear which could have been rattling the president late Monday.

Trump is currently playing cover for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who stands accused of violating international human rights law for permitting—or perhaps ordering—a second airstrike on a small Venezuelan boat in early September to kill all survivors. He has also leveraged the attacks to pressure Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro out of power, something that he tried and failed to do in 2019—though in the process he has rallied tens of thousands of Venezuelans against the United States.

On the other side of the planet, Trump still has yet to broker peace between Russia and Ukraine, something that he had promised from the first day he returned to office.

The 79-year-old could also be concerned about his health. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz’s public appeal for the release of Trump’s medical records appeared to seriously get under the president’s skin late Monday, inciting a wave of insults directed at the onetime vice presidential candidate by way of his keyboard. Still, public concerns prevail that there could be something seriously wrong with Trump, particularly after news broke that he covertly underwent some soft tissue scans.

Beyond all of that, the Epstein files—which reportedly mention Trump’s name numerous times—are on their way.

President Trump is making baseless claims of fraud in the Honduran election as he continues to publicly meddle in an incredibly close race between his choice—the conservative Tito Asfura—and liberal Salvador Nasralla. 

“Looks like Honduras is trying to change the results of their Presidential Election. If they do, there will be hell to pay!” President Trump said Monday night with zero evidence to back it up. “The National Electoral Commission, the official body charged with counting the Votes, abruptly stopped counting at midnight on November 30th. Their count showed a close race between Tito Asfura and Salvador Nasralla with Asfura holding a narrow lead of 500 votes. Their tally was stopped when only 47 percent of the Vote was counted. It is imperative that the Commission finish counting the Votes. Hundreds of thousands of Hondurans must have their Votes counted. Democracy must prevail!” 

In reality, this is a very slim election that will take the National Electoral Council, or CNE, an extended period of time to count. Preliminary results on Monday had Asfura ahead of Nasralla by just 515 votes. 

“Faced with this technical tie, we must remain calm, be patient, and wait for the CNE to finish counting,” said CNE head Ana Paola Hall. “Subsequently, the special counting process will be carried out in order to finalise the general count.”

Trump has already promised to cut off aid to Honduras if Asfura doesn’t win. Now he is further undermining the country’s electoral sovereignty by trying to lie his way into a favorable result. It’s obvious that Trump has his own agenda for Honduras, especially given his pardon of prolific drug trafficker and conservative former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was sentenced to 45 years in prison on drug-trafficking and weapons charges. The game plan is almost identical to Argentina—meddle in elections, promise funding to guarantee  your preferred candidate’s victory, and reap the benefits. 

Arizona Senator Mark Kelly accused Pete Hegseth Monday of “playing army,” after the defense secretary posted a juvenile meme making light of his military’s extrajudicial executions. 

Speaking at a press conference, Kelly nailed precisely what’s so disturbing about Hegseth’s lackluster leadership of the Pentagon: He’s like a little kid playing dress-up.  

“I mean, think about this: He runs around on a stage talking about lethality and warrior ethos and killing people. We have the most competent, capable military this planet has ever seen by far. That’s not the message that needs to come from the secretary of defense,” Kelly said. 

Instead of focusing on the military’s mission, “he runs around on a stage like he’s a 12-year-old playing army. And it is ridiculous, it is embarrassing,” Kelly said. “And I can’t imagine what our allies think of looking at that guy in this job, one of the most important jobs in our country.” 

Kelly was referring to Hegseth’s outrageous summit in September, where he invited droves of top military personnel to listen to him lecture about how much he hates the way overweight men with beards make him feel. 

The Arizona senator seems to be fighting back after becoming a target for the Trump administration. Last week, Hegseth threatened to court-martial Kelly, a former astronaut and U.S. naval officer, after he appeared in a video alongside fellow Democratic lawmakers to urge members of the U.S. military and intelligence community not to follow illegal orders. 

Kelly also slammed Hegseth for posting an AI image of the popular children’s character Franklin the Turtle extrajudicially blowing up “drug boats,” just days after it was revealed the secretary potentially committed a war crime of his own. 

“He is in the national command authority for nuclear weapons, and last night he’s putting out on the internet turtles with rocket-propelled grenades. I mean, have you seen this? This is the secretary of defense, this is not a serious person. He should have been fired after Signalgate, and then every day after that,” Kelly said. 

Kelly noted that the threats on his family’s lives had “obviously” increased since President Donald Trump accused him of sedition “punishable by death” last week. Hegseth also accused Kelly of sedition—though even pro-Trump legal experts say that claim falls flat. 

Kash Patel is in hot water for joyriding on the FBI’s dime.

Top Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee on Monday opened an investigation into multiple flights that Patel took last month with a $60 million government jet.

The visits were reportedly to visit his girlfriend, country singer Alexis Wilkins, who was performing at a wrestling event at Penn State.

The jet owner’s listed address, according to its FAA registration, is the FBI’s national headquarters in Washington. After Penn State, the plane’s flight log indicates it flew to Nashville, where Wilkins lives.

In a letter addressed to Patel, committee Democrats asked the bureau to hand over flight records and communications with recent passengers aboard to inform their investigation.

“You flew there because your girlfriend was performing at a wrestling match on the campus of Pennsylvania State University,” they wrote. “After attending her performance, you used the government’s jet to fly with her home to Nashville the following day. Your ‘date night’ had no apparent connections to your official duties.”

The caucus also accused Patel of using the government plane mere days later to spend time with some friends in Texas.

“Later that weekend, you took the FBI jet to San Angelo, Texas, for four days, where Republican Party mega-donor Bubba Saulsbury hosted you at Boondoggle Ranch—‘a scenic hunting resort’ that touts itself as the ideal place to ‘waste money or time on unnecessary or questionable projects,’” committee Democrats continued.

But that’s not all: CBS News reported earlier this year that Patel potentially used the FBI’s jets several more times, including a jaunt to Las Vegas and another trip to Nashville, both of which occurred in March.

The entire situation is a bit of a hypocritical development for the former podcaster, who used to regularly chastise government officials for needless spending before joining the Trump administration. He relentlessly hounded the financial behavior of the man who previously filled his shoes—former FBI Director Chris Wray—even arguing in 2023 that the FBI should “ground” Wray’s private jet “that he pays for with taxpayer dollars to hop around the country.”