Donald Trump has officially pardoned former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, according to the ex-leader’s attorney. He was released from a federal prison in West Virginia early Tuesday.

Hernández was sentenced to 45 years in prison for playing a central role in what the Biden administration deemed to be “one of the largest and most violent drug-trafficking conspiracies in the world.” Though Trump is blaming the conviction on Biden, much of the investigation began during Trump’s first term, with his now Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove acting as one of the lead investigators on the case.

The investigation found that Hernández moved mountains of cocaine between 2004 and 2022, facilitating the influx of more than 400 tons of the highly addictive substance into the U.S.

Under the protection of a machine gun-wielding, grenade launcher-toting gang, Hernández received “millions of dollars of drug money from some of the largest and most violent drug-trafficking organizations in Honduras, Mexico, and elsewhere.” The politico used that money to fuel his political ambitions, pay off bribes, and extend legal protections toward himself and his drug trafficking co-conspirators during his time in office.

The decision to release him comes just days after Hernández penned a sugar-coated letter to the U.S. president in which he claimed to be a victim of “political persecution” by the Biden administration, reported The New York Times.

Trump announced Friday that he planned to grant Hernández a “full and complete pardon,” though a White House official told the Times that the decision had nothing to do with the letter. Trump, at the time, had not seen the appeal, the official said on the condition of anonymity.

“This was a clear Biden over-prosecution,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. “He was the president of this country. He was in the opposition party. He was opposed to the values of the previous administration, and they charged him because he was president of Honduras.”

Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s approach to curbing narcoterrorism—which has involved bombing small boats in the Caribbean suspected of smuggling drugs without evidence—has run afoul of international law. It has also placed an outsized target on drug mules, potentially the lowest and least significant participants on the drug trade totem pole.

The decision to wipe Hernández’s record clean appears to be a seismic departure from the Trump administration’s rhetoric on drug trafficking. After celebrating the deaths of several people killed in an airstrike in September, Vice President JD Vance claimed that “killing cartel members who poison our fellow citizens is the highest and best use of our military.” That rule apparently does not apply to the head honchos of the drug trade—or to the White House.

This story has been updated.

Donald Trump’s social media addiction appeared to reach a new level last night.

The president made more than 150  posts to his Truth Social account late Monday night, resharing praise for his deportation agenda, fake news about Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, complaints about California Governor Gavin Newsom, and claims that Nancy Pelosi was the real mastermind behind the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol Building.

Freelance journalist Yashar Ali shared a screen recording of Trump’s social media binge, documenting the trove of late night posts. The scroll lasts nearly five minutes.

President Trump has posted hundreds of times in the last two hours.

Here is a screen recording of the posts.

The video is nearly five minutes long. pic.twitter.com/mOu4OGdUmL

“TRUTH SOCIAL IS THE BEST! There is nothing even close!!!” Trump wrote hours later, after the sun had come up.

That level of social media fixation puts Trump in line with America’s teens, who are spending hours on social media to the detriment of their mental health, according to a 2024 report by the American Psychological Association.

Social media addictions can be a horrible catch-22, feeding anxiety for users when they’re gravitating to the platform to distract from other stressors. But with so many scandals on his plate, it’s not clear which could have been rattling the president late Monday.

Trump is currently playing cover for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who stands accused of violating international human rights law for permitting—or perhaps ordering—a second airstrike on a small Venezuelan boat in early September to kill all survivors. He has also leveraged the attacks to pressure Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro out of power, something that he tried and failed to do in 2019—though in the process he has rallied tens of thousands of Venezuelans against the United States.

On the other side of the planet, Trump still has yet to broker peace between Russia and Ukraine, something that he had promised from the first day he returned to office.

The 79-year-old could also be concerned about his health. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz’s public appeal for the release of Trump’s medical records appeared to seriously get under the president’s skin late Monday, inciting a wave of insults directed at the onetime vice presidential candidate by way of his keyboard. Still, public concerns prevail that there could be something seriously wrong with Trump, particularly after news broke that he covertly underwent some soft tissue scans.

Beyond all of that, the Epstein files—which reportedly mention Trump’s name numerous times—are on their way.

President Trump is making baseless claims of fraud in the Honduran election as he continues to publicly meddle in an incredibly close race between his choice—the conservative Tito Asfura—and liberal Salvador Nasralla. 

“Looks like Honduras is trying to change the results of their Presidential Election. If they do, there will be hell to pay!” President Trump said Monday night with zero evidence to back it up. “The National Electoral Commission, the official body charged with counting the Votes, abruptly stopped counting at midnight on November 30th. Their count showed a close race between Tito Asfura and Salvador Nasralla with Asfura holding a narrow lead of 500 votes. Their tally was stopped when only 47 percent of the Vote was counted. It is imperative that the Commission finish counting the Votes. Hundreds of thousands of Hondurans must have their Votes counted. Democracy must prevail!” 

In reality, this is a very slim election that will take the National Electoral Council, or CNE, an extended period of time to count. Preliminary........

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