In light of President Donald Trump’s pardon, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has ruled dismissed filed an appeal against former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, overturning an earlier ruling against him on Wednesday.
The court found that Hernandez’s pardon rendered moot the appeal of his conviction and dismissed it. For the same reason, the court reversed his conviction and remanded the case to the lower court with an order of dismissal.
Hernandez speaks in a video which was played at a press conference in Honduras celebrated the court order. He thanked Trump for the pardon and said: “It’s a completely clean slate, it’s absolute justice.”
In 2024, a New York courthouse sentenced Hernandez is also alleged to have smuggled 400 tons of cocaine into the United States possession of machine guns, fined him $8 million and sentenced him to 45 years in prison.
However, President Donald Trump pardoned Hernandez in November 2025. Trump justified the pardon by calling the original investigation a “Biden administration installed” and adding, “They basically said he was a drug dealer because he was the president of the country.”
In a change to Senate Bill 1383the Veterans Accessibility Advisory Committee Act of 2025, Vermont Sen. Peter Welch (D) said Hernandez led one of the largest and most violent drug rings in the world. Welch condemned his pardon, saying it was “an affront to federal law enforcement … weakens the rule of law and significantly damages the credibility of the United States in combating drug trafficking.”
