President Trump is promising a “full and complete” pardon to the former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, who is serving a 45-year sentence in an American prison on charges of helping drug traffickers to bring hundreds of tons of cocaine into the United States.

The planned pardon stands in sharp contrast to the president’s military buildup in the Caribbean, where the administration is seeking the ouster of another Latin America president accused of complicity in the drug trade – Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela.

Mr. Maduro, however, leads a leftist government with a long history of antagonistic relations with America while Mr. Trump is publicly backing the right-wing National Party that Hernández led for a dozen years in a closely contested election on Sunday.

Mr. Trump announced the pardon in a Truth Social post on Friday, saying “I will be granting a Full and Complete Pardon to Former President Juan Orlando Hernandez who has been, according to many people that I greatly respect, treated very harshly and unfairly.”

In the same post, Mr. Trump endorsed the National Party candidate Tito Asfura, saying America “has so much confidence in him, his Policies, and what he will do for the Great People of Honduras, we will be very supportive. If he doesn’t win, the United States will not be throwing good money after bad, because a wrong Leader can only bring catastrophic results to a country, no matter which country it is.”

Mr. Trump did not identify the individuals who recommended the pardon to him. However a Honduran newspaper, El Heraldo, reported in January that former Trump adviser Roger Stone was advocating a pardon in order to boost Mr. Asfura’s candidacy.

“President Trump should seize this opportunity to strike back at the corrupt, leftist Honduran president Xiomara Castro, who refuses to take back criminal immigrants. #FreeJOH,” Mr. Stone was quoted as having posted on X.

Hernández was convicted by a Manhattan jury in March 2024 after a two-week trial at which U.S. prosecutors accused him of accepting millions of dollars in bribes in exchange for helping drug traffickers to move more than 400 tons of cocaine into America.

Confessed traffickers who testified at the trial said Hernández had provided protection to powerful druglords including Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the co-founder of Mexico’s notorious Sinaloa cartel – ironically one of the same cartels that Mr. Maduro is accused of assisting. Guzman is serving a life prison term in America.

Hernández continued to maintain his innocence at his sentencing in June 2024, saying he “was wrongly and unjustly accused,” according to an AP report at the time. However Judge P. Kevin Castel described him as a “two-faced politician hungry for power” and sentenced him to an $8 million fine along with the 45-year jail term.

Mr. Trump’s pardon for Hernández threatens to undermine the rationale for his drive to remove from power Mr. Maduro, which is based on allegations that he and his government are responsible for the import of large quantities of drugs into America.

In announcing a $50 million reward for the arrest of the Venezuelan leader on August 7, the attorney general, Pam Bondi, said, “Maduro uses foreign terrorist organizations like TDA, Sinaloa, and Cartel of the Suns to bring deadly drugs and violence into our country.”

A former chief of international operations at the Drug Enforcement Agency, Mike Vigil, told The New York Times that  the planned pardon imperils the reputation of the United States and its international investigations into drug trafficking.

“This action would be nothing short of catastrophic and would destroy the credibility of the U.S. in the international community,” Mr. Vigil was quoted as saying.

Mr. Asfura, the Trump-endorsed candidate in Sunday’s Honduras election, is locked in a tight three-way race against the candidate of the ruling left-wing Libre party and a centrist candidate.

The atmosphere is reported to be tense ahead of the voting, with charges of fraud and outside political influence.