Pelosi Blasts Trump for Pardoning Narco-Trafficker Juan Orlando Hernández: “Why Would He Pardon a Thug?”
Washington, D.C. – Today, Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi delivered remarks on the House Floor condemning President Trump’s decision to pardon Juan Orlando Hernández—the former President of Honduras who was convicted in U.S. federal court for trafficking cocaine into the United States.
In her speech, Pelosi recounted witnessing Hernández’s abuses firsthand during a bipartisan Congressional delegation to Honduras, where Members refused to meet with him due to his violent and criminal conduct. She underscored how Trump’s pardon disrespects American families devastated by narcotics, endangers law enforcement officers risking their lives to stop drug trafficking and undermines the rule of law.
Pelosi also condemned the hypocrisy of Trump pardoning a convicted drug trafficker while simultaneously justifying the bombing of small boats he claims are carrying drugs.
Watch Speaker Emerita Pelosi's Floor remarks here.
Read the transcript of Speaker Emerita Pelosi's Floor remarks below:
Speaker Emerita Pelosi. Mr. Speaker, I rise today with deep concern at the President's outrageous and shameful pardon of Juan Orlando Hernández, a man an American jury convicted of trafficking tons of cocaine into the United States and of corrupting his own government in the process.
I saw this firsthand when I brought a bipartisan delegation to Honduras when he was president. We refused to meet with him because he was and is a thug.
This is not a minor case. This is not a close call. This was a decisive conviction for crimes that have devastated American families and fueled violence and instability abroad.
And yet President Trump chose to use one of the most powerful powers of the presidency to wipe it all out.
This is so hypocritical as he's bombing small boats that he describes as full of drugs coming to the United States.
And perhaps they are. And that’s a different thing.
But if he's doing that, why would he pardon a thug?
Hernández once boasted at a meeting of narco-traffickers that ‘together they would shove the drugs right up the noses of the gringos.’
What message does pardoning this criminal send to parents who have lost children to narcotics, to law enforcement officers risking everything to stop the flow of deadly drugs?
This disgraceful pardon should be met with bipartisan condemnation as an affront to our values, our safety, our rule of law, our democracy.
Those who do not join in that condemnation are either pro-crime or do not care.
It’s another reminder: the American people must be vigilant. I yield back.