This past Friday, Trump announced he will pardon the former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, who in March 2024 was convicted by a U.S. jury and sentenced to 45 years in prison for conspiring to import massive amounts of cocaine into the US. Trump gave no substantive reason, saying only that Hernández had been "treated very harshly and unfairly" in the prosecution under the previous Biden administration (again with no evidence or even argument).
A necessary background to this sudden and unexplained pardon is that the U.S. has a long history of criminal and catastrophic interference in Honduras. So, this event screams for an explanation of what really is going on, and it is sure to be corrupt and shady. And on that score, Paul Krugman on his Substack provides an explanation which feels intriguingly correct in its corruption and overall weirdness:
[W]hy pardon Hernández? What’s the connection to the crypto/tech broligarchy? It’s called Próspera.
Próspera is a for-profit city being built off Honduras’s coast. Its charter largely exempts the island from Honduran law. Instead, the city is run by a governing structure that for the most part gives control to a corporation, Honduras Próspera Inc., which is in turn funded by a familiar list of Silicon Valley billionaires including Thiel, Sam Altman and Marc Andreesen.
So while the city is being marketed as a libertarian paradise, it’s best seen as an autonomous oligarchy, government of, by and for billionaires. And you won’t be surprised to learn that within Próspera, Bitcoin is legal tender.
The 2013 Honduran law that made the creation of Próspera possible was initially ruled unconstitutional by the Honduran Supreme Court. But that ruling was reversed after Juan Orlando Hernández’s predecessor, Porfirio Lobo Sosa, managed to dismiss 4 of the court’s justices. Like Hernández, Sosa was a right-winger, who became president after a populist president, Manuel Zelaya, was overthrown by a military coup. Under both Hernández and Sosa, chaos reigned – corruption, criminal gangs, and drugs overran the country. The current president, Zelaya’s wife, has tried to claw back some sovereignty over Próspera, which has struck back with a mammoth lawsuit that could bankrupt the country.
Yesterday Honduras held an election in which Trump backed Nasry Asfura, a member of the same right-wing party as Hernández. Early results show the governing left-wing party well behind, but Asfura in a virtual tie with another right-wing candidate.
In any case, the point is that while Trump threatens and fulminates against Maduro in Venezuela, he is openly backing the Honduran political party that has allowed massive drug smuggling into the U.S. Why? The only logical answer is because of the influence of the crypto/tech broligarchy and their interests in Próspera.
Aah! Where the US once f*cked around with Honduras and its people on behalf of U.S. fruit companies, and various CIA-backed shenanigans, today we have Trump doing the bidding of tech and crypto billionaires looking to mistreat and subvert that same country for their bat-shit libertarian schemes.
Not just “the press,” but Democratic leaders, must turn a bright spotlight on this Trump pardon and the facts behind it. Yes, this pardon stands in absurd contrast to Trump’s current spree of blowing up boats in the Caribbean region, and his general pretense of “tough on crime,” — but it cannot be limited to that contradiction. Dig deeper, and a lot of independently important and sordid stuff is lurking right there.
BTW — here is one obvious thread to pull. Trump says that the conviction of former-president Juan Orlando Hernández was somehow “unfair” and “unjust.” Where are the CIA and State Department files concerning whether Mr. Hernández was a drug dealer? Yes, we have a mountain of DOJ evidence from his trial — but in the pardon context there is no reason to exclude DoS, CIA and similar type evidence. Who in the government supports Trump’s position here?
