U.S. President Donald Trump gestures during a press conference following a U.S. strike on Venezuela where President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were captured, from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, U.S., January 3, 2026.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
The Trump administration is facing renewed questions over its recent pardon of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez after the U.S. captured Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro on Saturday and charged him with crimes related to drug trafficking.
Hernandez in 2024 was convicted of conspiring with drug traffickers and using his government position to help hundreds of tons of cocaine enter the United States. He was sentenced to 45 years in prison.
President Donald Trump pardoned Hernandez in November, saying in a post to his Truth Social account that he had been “treated very harshly and unfairly.”
Maduro was charged with narco-terrorism conspiracy, along with four other charges: cocaine importation conspiracy; possession of machine guns and destructive devices; and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday was pressed on the apparent contradiction of Hernandez’ pardon now that the U.S. is seeking similar charges against Maduro, another head of state of a South American nation with ties to the drug trade.
“I don’t do the pardon file, I’m not against it or for it, I didn’t review the file, so I can’t speak to you about the dynamics that led the president to make the decision that he made,” Rubio said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“He reviewed the file, he went through the arguments in it and he felt that the former president of Honduras was treated very unfairly by the previous administration,” Rubio said.
Rubio said that “whether you agree with that decision or not … that doesn’t mean you leave Maduro in place.”
“The answer to that, whether you have a problem with it or not, is not to leave in play someone who has been indicted who hasn’t even faced American justice yet,” Rubio said.
Trump’s pardon of Hernandez was already under intense scrutiny before Maduro’s ouster. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement that the “hypocrisy underlying this decision is especially glaring.”
“This same president recently pardoned former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted in a U.S. court on serious drug trafficking charges, including conspiring with narcotics traffickers while in office,” Warner said. “Yet now, the administration claims that similar allegations justify the use of military force against another sovereign nation. You cannot credibly argue that drug trafficking charges demand invasion in one case, while issuing a pardon in another.”
At a press conference on Saturday after Maduro’s capture, Trump was pressed on the pardon. He said Hernandez was “persecuted very unfairly.”
“He was treated like the Biden administration treated a man named Trump,” Trump said, referring to his own criminal prosecutions for allegedly hoarding classified documents and attempting to overturn the 2020 election after leaving office following his first term as president.
Trump also cited his endorsement of Nasry Asfura, the president-elect of Honduras, as another reason for the pardon.
“He’s also a party member of the man who won, so obviously the people liked what I did,” Trump said. “And one of the reasons that was done is because of the fact that the party in power felt very strongly that that man was treated very badly.”
Trump also gestured at Rubio and other members of his national security team when explaining why he issued the pardon.
“I went to a lot of the people standing behind me, and they felt that that man was persecuted and treated very badly,” he said.