Commentary by Stephen Macaulay
Juan Orlando Hernandez was convicted in March 2024 of facilitating the smuggling of some 400 pounds of cocaine into the United States.
According to the US Department of Justice, 400 tons of cocaine is on the order of 4,500,000,000 individual doses.
That means every man, woman and child in the US could have had 13 snorts of the drug.
Hernandez was sentenced by a US court to spend 45 years in prison.
He is the sort of person that Donald Trump might characterize as being a “bad hombre.”
So what is Donald Trump going to do to Juan Orlando Hernandez?
Pardon him.
Meanwhile, the Trump Administration is blowing up boats in the Caribbean. These boats are supposed to be owned and operated by drug runners.
According to a report in The Washington Post on November 28, when it was determined that one of the boats blown up wasn’t completely destroyed and there were two survivors, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegsteth (who fancies himself as “Secretary of War,” presumably having played plenty of video games during his formative years) allegedly ordered that those two get taken out, too.
Which violates a whole lot of law, to say nothing of basic decency.
After the WaPo report Hegseth posted on X that the “’lethal, kinetic strikes’” are targeting people “affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization.”
It seems, however, that the Trump Administration doesn’t want to share its evidence of those affiliations with anyone in Congress.
More than 80 people have been killed.
According to the US Congress, a “Foreign Terrorist Organization” (FTO) can be designated by the secretary of state if the entity meets three criteria: “the suspected terrorist group must (1) be a foreign organization; (2) engage in ‘terrorist activity,’ ‘terrorism,’ or retain the capability and intent to engage in terrorist activity or terrorism; and (3) threaten the security of US nationals or the national defense, foreign relations, or economic interests of the United States.”
As for what a “terrorist activity” is, the Immigration and Nationality Act defines it as including “specific types of violent actions (hijackings, assassinations, etc.).” Then there’s the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, which defines “terrorism” as a "premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents."
In other words, there are specific boxes that must be checked before there is a designation. People just can’t make it up as they go along.
No one wants US citizens to be endangered, corrupted or otherwise negatively impacted from illegal drugs coming from the Caribbean or anywhere else, like Honduras.
Juan Orlando Hernandez is the former president of Honduras (2014-2022). He was extradited to the US after he was out of office.
So let’s see: Hernandez was tried and convicted. And now pardoned.
And let’s not forget Donald Trump’s pardon of Changpeng Zhao, who pled guilty and was convicted, along with the cryptocurrency company he ran, Binance (which was hit with a $4.3-billion settlement), for money laundering. The money laundering was associated with both drug cartels and terrorists.
Seems a bit strange that there is a willingness to pardon convicted criminals and to blow up boats being manned by what can only be thought of as alleged criminals.
One of the things that makes this country truly great — not “great” in the context of a red baseball cap — is that it is based on the rule of law.
Apparently the rule of law is something that is now becoming conditional, with the conditions being set on an ad-hoc basis.
Macaulay is pundit-at-large for The Hustings.