Part 1 made the geopolitical argument for Trump’s pardon of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez.
Part 2 examined the case the Biden Department of Justice put on.
Part 3 examined how the prosecutors lied to get the trial in front of a biased judge and an uninformed jury.
Part 4 showed how the prosecutors coached cooperators to lie about ledgers and radar that did not exist.
This is Part 5.
The Biden Department of Justice built its case against Juan Orlando Hernández on one idea: that Honduras became a narco-state while he was president.
Prosecutors said he used political influence, security forces, intelligence structures, and the authority of the presidency to protect the movement of cocaine through Honduras.
For eight years, during Hernández’s two terms as Honduras’s president, the U.S. State Department, the Department of Defense, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the U.S. Army War College had said the opposite.
The U.S. had praised him for fighting drug trafficking.
The Biden DOJ argued the eight years of praise had been the cover. That Hernández had pretended to fight drugs so he could traffic them.
The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Damian Williams, and his prosecutors chose four convicted drug dealers in U.S. custody to testify that Hernández was the Honduran drug trafficker in chief.
All four were cooperators. All four were facing life in federal prison. Each was eligible for a § 5K1.1 cooperation letter from the prosecutors — the document that, when filed, allows a federal judge to sentence below the otherwise mandatory minimum.
Each would get back his life, or some part of his life, for testifying that Hernández — the formerly praised president — was a secret drug trafficker.
Each gave the prosecutors what the prosecutors needed.
Alexander Ardón. Former mayor of El Paraíso, Copán. Pleaded guilty to 56 murders and the trafficking of 250 tons of cocaine. Faced life plus 30 years. Served less than six years in U.S. federal custody before being released back to Honduras.
Devis Leonel Rivera Maradiaga. Former leader of Los Cachiros. Pleaded guilty to 78 murders. Faced life plus 30 years. Has been a cooperating witness in five major SDNY prosecutions over eleven years. His final sentence has not been imposed. His current custody status is not in the public record.
Luis Pérez. The pseudonym of Alexander Monroy-Murillo, a Colombian. Worked for Sinaloa Cartel leaders Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán and Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada. Trafficked 200,000 kilograms of cocaine from Colombia through Honduras over seven years, starting in 2008. Sentenced to 135 months. Served 6 years and 3 months — after the Department of Justice filed a motion to reduce his sentence in exchange for his cooperation.
Fabio Lobo. The son of Porfirio Pepe Lobo, Hernández’s predecessor as president of Honduras (2010 to 2014). Sentenced in September 2017 by Judge Lorna Schofield to 24 years. Four months after Judge P. Kevin Castel sentenced Hernández to 45 years, Castel granted Fabio Lobo a sentence reduction. Lobo was released after serving seven years of his 24-year sentence.
The prosecution’s case rested on the testimony of four cooperators who, between them, had been responsible for 134 murders and the trafficking of more than 700 tons of cocaine. Based on the public record, the amount of time those four cooperators have collectively served in U.S. federal prison for those crimes is approximately 19 years.
The man they testified against was sentenced to 45 years on the strength of their testimony alone.
There was nothing else.
No recording of any of the alleged meetings. No photograph. No financial record. No bank trace of the millions of dollars that allegedly changed hands. No surveillance footage. No phone records between Hernández and any of the four cooperators. No text messages. No emails. No corroborating witness — not a single person outside the four cooperators was willing to confirm any of the events they described.
The Drug Enforcement Administration had wiretaps on El Chapo Guzmán’s communications throughout 2013, when Ardón says El Chapo personally delivered $1 million to Hernández. The wiretaps captured every other significant transaction in El Chapo’s life that year. They did not capture the Hernández meeting.
Rivera Maradiaga recorded hundreds of conversations as a DEA informant from 2013 forward. He did not record a single conversation with Hernández.
Pérez claimed he gave $2.4 million to Hernández’s campaign in 2013 through intermediaries, including an unnamed official at the Port of Cortés. The official was never identified, never arrested, never charged, never produced as a witness.
Lobo’s account of cash bribes paid to Hilda Hernández was contradicted by Rivera Maradiaga’s account of the same alleged payments. The two cooperators told different stories about the same transactions. Hilda Hernández was dead and could not confirm or deny either version.
That was the case. Four men. Four stories. No corroboration. Each was hoping for the prosecutors’ § 5K1.1 letter as their only hope of getting out of prison. Each had every reason to say what the prosecutors needed.
That was the case.
Unravel the story, and the smell is the same. A story coached by the prosecutors. They wanted their man — Hernández.
Who ordered them from above in the Biden administration is hard to know.
What we do know is that the testimony was uncorroborated, that the cooperators had every reason to give the prosecutors what they wanted, and that they each got what they wanted in exchange. The federal term for that pattern, when it is proven, is subornation of perjury.
Hernández’s innocence was irrelevant.
