Podcast: After Trump Pardon, Hernández Appeals to Court of Public Opinion

This is the transcript of episode 68 of the weekly El Faro English podcast, Central America in Minutes.

DANIELA AND ISABELA HERNÁNDEZ: What does the recent ruling by the Court of Appeals mean? Here’s our explanation. It means that, in the eyes of the law, Juan Orlando Hernández is innocent, just as we have always maintained.

RAMAZZINI, HOST: Last November, days before the presidential election in Honduras, U.S. President Donald Trump pardoned former president Juan Orlando Hernández for his drug trafficking conviction, springing him loose from a 45-year prison sentence.

And this week, Hernández declared victory. You just heard his daughters speaking. On Wednesday, he called a press conference and claimed the Second Circuit Court of Appeals had declared him innocent. Except, that’s not really what happened.

JOH appeal closed

Juan Orlando Hernández, the most famous former Honduran president in decades, lied this week when he claimed that a higher court had declared him “innocent” of drug trafficking charges.

In reality, all New York’s Court of Appeals did was close the appeal case, ruling that it no longer had any purpose due to the pardon announced by Trump last November.

This week’s ruling does not erase the fact that Hernández was prosecuted, found guilty, and sentenced for drug trafficking and weapons offenses.

In fact, during the 2024 trial, his own defense attorney requested a prison sentence equivalent to 45 years — the minimum possible for such crimes. At his sentencing hearing, the judge called Hernández a “two-faced politician hungry for power.”

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The case remained under review by the Court of Appeals until this past Wednesday, April 8. The court stated that it made no sense to continue reviewing the case due to the official pardon. So they ordered the case closed.

Hernández’s attorney, Renato Stabile, told the Honduran TV channel HCH that calling the former president a “convicted criminal” would constitute defamation.

STABILE: He is presumed innocent; he is no longer a convicted criminal; he cannot be called a drug trafficker. Today is a new day. From now on, it would be defamation to call him a convicted criminal because he is not.

RAMAZZINI: The power to grant pardons is a prerogative of U.S. presidents, and when a convicted person receives a pardon, they regain their civil rights. Trump said when announcing the pardon for Hernández that the prosecution had been a “witch hunt.”

The U.S. Supreme Court established in other pardon cases that a pardon “implies an admission of guilt and that accepting it implies a confession,” because while it eliminates the penalty, “it does not erase the facts associated with the crime.”

Now, Hernández wants to return to Honduras, reunite with his family, and reclaim their properties. He’s also requesting an end to his criminal prosecution in Honduran territory.

On Wednesday evening, over four months after Trump let him out of prison, Juan Orlando made one more appeal.

HERNÁNDEZ: I want to take this opportunity to make a special request to President Trump, the U.S. government, and U.S. Embassy: that they reconsider my family’s visa case. After more than four years without seeing each other, our desire remains to reunite, reconnect, and be together as a family.

A majority in Costa Rica

Next stop, Costa Rica. Three days ago, President-elect Laura Fernández announced the first decrees she’ll sign when she takes office in May. Mining rights are on the agenda. And she says she will convene three months of extraordinary sessions of the legislature where she personally will set the agenda.

In an age of vertical videos and live streams, she also announced that her first cabinet meeting will take place immediately after she’s sworn in, at the National Stadium.

Fernández’s party secured a simple majority with 30 out of 57 seats in the Legislative Assembly. This puts her at an advantage. The last three administrations have governed with a maximum of just 10 deputies.

Her agenda will include bills that could not be passed in the current assembly due to those old numbers. Among these is the Crucitas mine, on the border with Nicaragua, where illegal mining is taking place, as we covered in episode 63.

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The Costa Rican government has said it’s thinking about approving national mining rights in the area, allegedly to head off the illegal Nicaraguan mining operations.

It also includes a four-by-three day work week proposal. It would mean that employees work 12-hour shifts four days a week, with no overtime pay after a current regular day, due to the reorganized schedule. Fernández asserts that this proposal will help create jobs.

She says modernizing the national electricity market and building a cruise ship marina are also priorities. During the Chaves administration, part of a national tourism plan was halted because it violated public contracting law.

Fernández has called herself the candidate of “continuity” of Chaves’s legacy. To keep him close, she offered him the post of Minister of the Presidency, a chief operative overseeing work with her cabinet and the legislature. It was the same post she held in his government.

Chaves has not yet commented on the matter, but a response may come days before the ministerial appointments in May.

Holy Week restrictions in Nicaragua

Last, we turn to Nicaragua, where Holy Week —and whether there really is religious freedom in the country— became an international dispute.

According to the digital outlet Divergentes, no religious processions were held in the street, and the scattered few that did happen were under state surveillance. And they were held at church premises, which doesn’t exactly make them processions.

On Holy Tuesday, on his X account, Deputy Secretary of State Chris Landau highlighted religious persecution in Nicaragua, while the Ortega-Murillo regime seeks to deny the country’s repressive policies internationally.

Landau wrote, “Once again this year, the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship is denying the people of Nicaragua the right to profess their faith in this manner by banning such public processions.”

Since 2018, public gatherings have been largely banned in Nicaragua. Mass is held under state surveillance, and priests have been subject to prison or exile.

Since October 2023, Ortega and Murillo have forced more than 200 religious figures into exile. Journalist Víctor Ticay was arrested during Holy Week in 2023 and held for months for covering a Catholic procession.

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Co-president Rosario Murillo dismissed the U.S. criticism as a political hit job. She denied that the government was cracking down on Holy Week activities, “which we attend with reverence, fulfilling our traditions as people of God.”

Murillo didn’t mention that she and Ortega have vetoed many Holy Week processions for eight years. According to Nicaraguan religious freedom expert Martha Molina, they have banned more than 28,000 of them since 2019.

This episode was written by Yuliana Ramazzini, Gabriel Labrador, and Leyrian Colón Santiago, with editing by Roman Gressier and sound design by Omnionn. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, iHeart, and YouTube.