Letter to the editor: A two-faced politician hungry for power

First published in the Brunswick Beacon, 12.11.25

That’s how Judge Peter Castel described Juan Hernández, former president of Honduras, before handing him a 45-year sentence for trafficking cocaine to the U.S.

Prosecutors said Hernández was at “the center of one of the largest and most violent drug-trafficking conspiracies in the world.” Castel said the number of killings it caused was “staggering.”

Hernández boasted, “We’re going to stuff the drugs up the gringos’ noses, and they’re never even going to know it!” Prosecutors said Hernández “paved a cocaine superhighway to the United States.”

Hernández took million-dollar bribes from narco-traffickers, including notorious Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, now serving life in a Colorado supermax penitentiary. In return, Hernández gave them “access to law enforcement and military information.”

Hernández used drug money to bribe election officials in two presidential campaigns and steal a second term despite a constitutional ban on reelection. “His No. 1 goal,” said Castel, “was his own political survival.”

In 2019, Trump’s Justice Department convicted Hernández’s brother for arranging the bribes and trafficking cocaine. Soon afterwards, Trump praised Hernández for “working with the United States very closely. We’re stopping drugs at a level that’s never happened.” Was Trump ignorant, lying or complicit?

Hernández claimed, “This was a political persecution.” Trump, who made the same claim about his own 34 felony convictions, said Hernández was “treated very harshly and unfairly” and pardoned him. The prosecutor was Emil Bove, Trump’s own lawyer!

“I hate it,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.): “A dude that was convicted of trafficking 400 tons of cocaine … and let him go? Does that make sense?”

Of course not. But Trump isn’t killing Venezuelans to stop drug trafficking. He’s doing it because Venezuela has the world’s largest proven oil reserves. Trump said land attacks are coming “very soon.” Florida’s Republican representative and Trump ally Maria Salazar explained, “we’re about to go in” because “Venezuela, for the American oil companies, will be a field day!”

Janine Sacramone

Leland