Hondurasgate Looks Worse than Watergate and Iran-Contra Combined

A disgraced Central American president—convicted of taking bribes from drug kingpins, including the notorious El Chapo, and using the money to bribe officials and manipulate his elections—is pardoned by the President of the United States so he can spearhead a propaganda operation to undermine the democratically elected presidents of Mexico and Colombia and facilitate his own political comeback. Leaked audio captures him spelling out the plan and revealing that he is working with leaders of the United States, Argentina, and Israel. 

This is neither the screenplay for a reboot of the political thriller 24 nor for the farcical Woody Allen film Bananas. This is real life.  

Last month, a group of anonymous Honduran journalists created the website Hondurasgate.ch and posted audio clips allegedly featuring Juan Orlando Hernández. As you may recall, Hernández was the right-wing president of Honduras until 2022, when he was arrested and extradited to the United States. Federal prosecutors said he facilitated the importation of 400 tons of cocaine into America.  

The Hondurasgate journalists posted a forensic analysis of each clip to prove they are not faked by artificial intelligence. However, the Honduran legislature, controlled by Hernández’s party, approved sending the audio to unnamed “specialized laboratories in the United States” to determine its authenticity. 

Hernández was sentenced to 45 years in prison. He served one. On November 28, Donald Trump announced his intention to pardon Hernández, claiming without evidence that Joe Biden framed Hernández. Two days before the pardon announcement, Trump endorsed Nasry Asfura, the candidate trying to regain the presidency for Hernández’s party. Two days after the pardon announcement, Hondurans voted. After partial returns showed Asfura just barely ahead, Trump baselessly accused the existing Honduran government of fraud. As the vote count dragged on through December, Trump imposed visa restrictions on two election officials from a left-wing party, including Marlon Ochoa, soon after Asfura was declared the winner, though his two main opponents cried foul and complained about Trump’s meddling.  

The following month, according to audio posted to Hondurasgate.ch, Hernández spoke with Asfura and the new vice president María Antonieta Mejía (yes, the Spanish version of Marie Antoinette, I swear I’m not making this up.) 

Hernández asks Asfura to send over $150,000 “because we are going to rent an apartment here and we’re going to set up an office to launch a digital journalism unit. Someone else from here is going to run it for me, from the team of the President of the United States. He’s one of the Republicans helping us. They are going to set up a news site for us where they’re going to release some important data on Manuel Zelaya and Xiomara Castro,” the preceding left-wing Honduran president and her husband (who is also a former president, ousted in a 2009 military coup).  

Hernández also noted the “news site” will be based in the U.S. “so they don’t track us in Honduras,” and will have “dossiers coming against Mexico, dossiers coming against Colombia, and most importantly, against Honduras — in this case against the Zelaya family.” Asfura agrees and offers to give Hernández an additional $150,000 “for yourself,” taken out of the country’s infrastructure department.  

Mexico and Colombia just so happen to have left-wing presidents. In a subsequent call, Hernández tells Vice President Mejía, “I need that liquidity because we are going to set up an office here, with the support of some Republicans, so we can attack and remove the cancer of the left from Honduras and from all Latin America. I was telling President Asfura that we managed to speak with [President of Argentina] Javier Milei, and he is also putting in $350,000. Another big friend of ours from Mexico is also chipping in, just for the Mexican angle.” Mejía promises to “handle the whole arrangement” of $300,000. 

In a March conversation, Hernández told Asfura that he expects to return to the presidency, with Trump’s backing: “I want to believe you won’t push me aside, because thanks to me, you’re sitting in that chair. Mr. President, it’s going to be me. And I expect your support. Because that’s what we agreed with President Trump.” 

According to a January audio clip between Hernández and an unknown interlocutor, the former president gives much of the credit for his release to Benjamin Netanyahu: “The Israeli prime minister is going to back us. We’re very grateful to him. They had a lot to do with it. In fact, they had everything to do with my release and the negotiation.” In March, Hernández claims, “The pardon money didn’t even come from you … it came from a council of rabbis, from people who back Israel, the same people who in the past had backed Yani Rosenthal.” (Rosenthal was a presidential candidate in 2021 for a center-right party, running against Castro and Asfura.) What this “pardon money” paid for and who received it is not clear. 

Before anyone jumps to anti-Semitic conclusions, remember that one of the targets of this apparent operation is Mexico’s President, Claudia Sheinbaum, the first Jewish leader of a nation with a population of over 100 million people. What unites these figures behind Hernández is right-wing ideology, not religion.  

The anonymous Hondurasgate reporters further conclude, citing additional audio clips about business deals involving natural resource development, “As China consolidates its dominance over critical-mineral processing — handling more than 85% of global rare-earth refining — the United States has stepped up its race to lock in control of its zones of influence. The fight is not only about natural resources, but about who controls the supply chains and, above all, who imposes the development model of the western hemisphere.” 

Some of the audio disturbingly portends political violence. Hernández tells a member of the Honduran legislature, “In Honduras, you need force, you need logistics, you need blood. If you want the people under control, you have to crush them. Squeeze them. Counter the violence by generating violence. It’s what President Trump says, and you act as if he’s going to be there forever.” It’s not clear if Trump directly said anything along these lines to Hernández.  

Another clip features Cossette Lopez-Osorio, a member of the country’s election commission aligned with Hernández, plotting against her commission colleague, Marlon Ochoa, whom Trump previously sanctioned. Referring to the possibility of putting Ochoa on trial in the legislature, Lopez-Osorio says to a group, “Tell me how we’re going to move forward without having removed that bastard Marlon from his post. Nothing can be done, nothing can be moved, nothing can be touched; we can’t go anywhere without having a clear position on the political trial.” With such a trial, “he’ll have the prize of being left alone here at the [election commission]. That doesn’t seem right to me. Jail or death. That’s what I’m going to say. Jail or death.”  

Last month, after the legislature approved going forward with the trial, Ochoa fled Honduras, seeking asylum in an undisclosed country. Ochoa posted on X: “They stole the elections, and that is an act of terrorist association that must be investigated. I am an eyewitness. The elite lives in impunity and does not accept reforms. It does not accept a party that asks the powerful to pay taxes. It does not accept that we reject foreign interference . . . Today they order the fabrication of accusations, issue an arrest warrant, and push me into prison, where they plan my death. There is evidence. They pardon the kingpin and, by buying congressmen, condemn the one who fulfills his duty to denounce.” 

What we hear in these audio clips is a scandal worse than Watergate and Iran-Contra combined, arguably worse than the scandal that got Trump impeached the first time, when he threatened to cut off military aid to Ukraine unless it launched an investigation into Joe Biden. Assuming the audio is authentic, Hondurasgate is far more than a threat. Hondurasgate is an elaborate plot well underway. The President of the United States appears to have pardoned a right-wing authoritarian convicted for his part in a massive cocaine trafficking operation in order reinstate him to power in Honduras and undermine left-wing governments in Mexico and Colombia. 

I know we are all numbed by the breadth and depth of Trump’s corrupt behavior. I know this might seem like just one more scandal to add to the pile. I know impeachment and conviction are political non-starters. But none of that is an excuse for American media outlets to ignore a five-alarm fire story.  

Mexican media covered it, even prompting an on-record response from Sheinbaum. (“They may set up an office for dirty campaigns against our government in Honduras with resources from a friendly people through its government, but there will be no dent.”) There’s coverage from media outlets in Spain, Peru, Colombia, and Costa Rica. But nothing in the mainstream American press.  

The most recent coverage of Mexico in The New York Times is about how the U.S. State Department is investigating claims “circulating in conservative media in recent months that Mexican consulates interfere in American politics and encourage mass migration to the United States,” and may shut down some Mexican consulates. Why is such a story being reported without even a mention of evidence of a plot to undermine the Mexican government through illicitly funded propaganda? 

Keeping track of all the insanity in the world is overloading our brain circuits. But don’t look away from Hondurasgate. Latin American democracy, and the political future of a Jewish woman who made history, are under siege. One man has already fled his country for fear of his life. The biggest scandal yet appears to be under our noses and in our ears. 

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