Eric Zuesse
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
15 May 2026, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)
On May 10th, Germany’s public TV network Deutsche Welle headlined
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKTSpt_dP9M
“Plot against the left? Conspiracy claims shake Latin America | DW News”,
and tried to discredit the conspiracy allegations by insinuating that these allegations were published by a leftist and little-known, instead of mainstream, news-medium. The allegations were presented as being part of a “disinformation war” between “the left” and “the right.” The report closed with “When will there be someone who can verify this?” and saying that these recorded phone-conversations might just be AI inventions. Nothing was said about analysis of the voices in those conversations; there was no concern about a scientific analysis of the evidences, not even a suggestion that they ought to be done. But if the background of these recordings is presented, mainstream verification of them might not be quite so necessary. Here is some of that relevant background:
In 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama’s Secretary of State, with the backing of the far-right Republican U.S. Senator Jim DeMint and other (mostly Republican) Senators, granted legitimacy to the 28 June 2009 coup by Honduras’s aristocratic families that ousted the progressive democratically elected Honduran President, Manuel Zelaya, who had tried to introduce a land-reform law to end the country’s feudalism. As I documented in articles from 2013 to 2024, the U.S.-approved replacement leaders of Honduras, who had been selected by its aristocracy in conjunction with the U.S. Government, swung the nation so far to the extreme right, so that it became quickly an outright narco-state where the aristocracy and drug-traffickers thrived, and the country’s murder-rate soared to the world’s highest. Millions of Hondurans fled the country to enter the United States, in order to survive and be able to raise their children. For example, “From October 2018 to end-August 2019, U.S. border patrols apprehended more than 240,000 Hondurans trying to cross into the U.S. from Mexico (approximately 2.5 per cent of Honduras’ population).”
On 22 March 2021, Britain’s Daily Mail headlined “Drug trafficker who ‘bribed Honduras President Hernández to ship cocaine to the United States’ is convicted in NY federal court”, and opened:
A drug trafficker who was reportedly seen in the past paying off Honduras President Juan Orlando Hernández was convicted by a New York federal court jury on Monday.
Geovanny Fuentes Ramírez was found guilty on three counts, which included cocaine trafficking and weapons charges.
‘Geovanny Fuentes Ramirez was, up until his arrest by the DEA just over a year ago, a ruthless, powerful, and murderous cocaine trafficker in Honduras,’ Manhattan U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss said.
‘He facilitated the shipment of large loads of cocaine by bribing Juan Orlando Hernández Alvarado, then president of the Honduran National Congress and now the Honduran president. Hernández Alvarado instructed Fuentes Ramirez to report directly to convicted co-conspirator and former Honduran congressman Tony Hernandez, the president’s brother.’
Furthermore,
During the trial, Devis Leonel Rivera Maradiaga, former leader of the Cachiros cartel, testified that he had sent $250,000 to Hernández in 2012 through his sister in exchange for protection of his smuggling business and to avoid extradition.
“Tony Hernandez, the president’s brother” was the subject of the 30 March 2021 Wall Street Journal’s article, “Brother of Honduras President Sentenced to Life in Drug-Trafficking Case: Trial evidence showed that Juan Antonio ‘Tony’ Hernández had smuggled some 185 tons of cocaine to the U.S.” It opened:
The brother of Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández was sentenced to life in prison Tuesday after he was convicted on drug-trafficking charges in a trial that underscored allegations the president has helped turn Honduras into a violent narco-state.
The Hernandez brothers worked together heading this operation; it was a family affair, a crime family affair, and a “conspiracy.”
The article also said:
“Here, the trafficking was indeed state-sponsored,” said Judge Castel, reading a statement as he imposed the sentence. He noted that Juan Antonio Hernández had brazenly stamped his initials “T.H.” for Tony Hernández on the cocaine he imported to the U.S. The judge also ordered him to forfeit $138.5 million.
On 8 March 2024, the leader of Honduras’s fascist National Party, Juan Orlando Hernández — who is sometimes referred to as Juan Hernando Hernández and who had been Honduras’s President during 2014-2022 — was finally convicted in the United States of three counts of drug trafficking and weapons conspiracy, and on 26 June of that year, he was sentenced to 45 years of prison.
The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York headlined “Juan Orlando Hernandez, Former President Of Honduras, Convicted In Manhattan Federal Court Of Conspiring To Import Cocaine Into The United States And Related Firearms Offenses” and reported:
Juan Orlando Hernandez had every opportunity to be a force for good in his native Honduras. Instead, he chose to abuse his office and country for his own personal gain and partnered with some of the largest and most violent drug trafficking organizations in the world to transport tons of cocaine to the United States.
Additionally:
As reflected in the Indictment and the evidence presented at trial: … HERNANDEZ received millions of dollars in drug money from some of the largest and most violent drug-trafficking organizations in Honduras, Mexico, and elsewhere, and used those bribes to fuel his rise in Honduran politics.
Then, on 24 June 2024, the U.S. Prosecutor in that case presented to the sentencing judge, “The Government’s Sentencing Submission”, and the reasons for recommending a life sentence were explained throughout its 62 pages. The opening page said:
Following a three-week trial, the defendant was convicted of (i) participating in a conspiracy to import cocaine into the United States, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 963; (ii) using machineguns and destructive devices in furtherance of his drugtrafficking offense, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1)(B)(ii); and (iii) participating in a conspiracy to carry and use machineguns and destructive devices in furtherance of his drugtrafficking offense, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 924(o). The proof underlying this conviction laid bare that the defendant and his co-conspirators played a vital role in flooding the United States with cocaine. The defendant was an essential participant at the heart of this conspiracy, and a sentence of life imprisonment is appropriate in this case. For more than a decade, the defendant abused his political power to operate Honduras — a country of roughly ten million people — as a narco-state. The defendant’s rise was fueled by millions of dollars in drug money from some of the largest and most violent cocaine traffickers in the world. Once he gained control of Honduras, he protected those drugs and his partners with the full power of the state, channeling his country’s law enforcement, military, and financial resources to protect his co-conspirators and help them grow their international drug distribution network.
However, on 1 December 2025, Hernandez was released from prison after being formally pardoned by U.S. President Donald Trump. When the press asked Trump why he did this, his response was
Well, he was the president and they had some drugs being sold in their country and because he was the president, they went after him. That was a Biden horrible witch hunt which was, you know, a lot of people in Honduras asked me to do that and I did it. I feel very good about it. Uh, if you have some drug dealers in your country and you’re the president, uh, you don’t necessarily put the president in jail for 45 years. That was a Biden inspired witch hunt.
In other words, fellow fascists, in both Honduras and America, had told Trump that this had been a conviction not by the U.S. Government and 12 unanimous jurors, but by America’s Democratic Party. No one contested the evidences in the case, and Trump didn’t care to examine them. Thus, Hernández is again a free man, set free by his fellow-far-right-idealogue, Trump. But Hernández’s brother (who had gotten the full life sentence, for the very same conspiracy) stays in prison. “Here, the trafficking was indeed state-sponsored,” said Judge Castel, reading a statement as he imposed the sentence. He noted that Juan Antonio Hernández had brazenly stamped his initials “T.H.” for Tony Hernández on the cocaine he imported to the U.S. The judge also ordered him to forfeit $138.5 million.
According to Trump’s stated view, America’s problems come from the Democratic Party, not from America’s thousand billionaires, who fund both Parties, and of which he is the first ever to be America’s President.
If you wish to know more about any of these matters, just click onto the given link in this article.
Anyway, on 30 April 2026,
Yandex-autotranslated into English as
reported:
EXCLUSIVE: Audios reveal that Israel paid for the release of Juan Orlando Hernández and that Trump is helping him to return to the presidency of Honduras
Audios WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram published in exclusive by Channel NETWORK and Hondurasgate, uncover an operation of corruption and political interference in Honduras, with the direct involvement of Donald Trump and Bejamín Netanyahu. The United States and Israel, through the president [Trump] pardoned Juan Orlando Hernández, intended the construction of a new [U.S.] military base, Honduras to design a law for incentives for investment in Artificial Intelligence, as well as a master known as Zones for Employment and Economic Development
Juan Orlando Hernández, president of Honduras convicted for drug trafficking, plan to return to power with the help of the US and Israel.
Political scientist and researcher Bolivian, works, topics of Geopolitics, regional Integration, State Theory, and Gender. She is a founding member of the collective communication feminist left Taken Home.
Updated: 30/04/26 | 16:25
Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are preparing to extend their areas of control in Central America. The access door on this occasion is Honduras, where the former president Juan Orlando Hernández —sentenced for drug trafficking to 45 years in prison in a Court of the United States and later pardoned by Donald Trump — worked busily a network of corruption to eliminate any resistance.
The plot involves also the current president, Nasry Asfura; the president of the National Congress, Thomas Zambrano; the minister for National Election, Cosette Lopez-Osorio; and the vice-president María Antonieta Mejia.
They all appear in a series of audios from WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram, obtained exclusively by Channel NETWORK and Hondurasgate to uncover an operation of political interference and corruption of historic proportions, which includes the return of Hernandez to the presidency of Honduras with the support of Trump and Israeli funding. The plan is simple: cede to the United States and Israel’s control of the areas of development, a U.S. military base and the legislative development of a legal environment conducive to business of Artificial Intelligence of the US and Israel.
The conversations that we publish exclusive were made between January and April 2026, and prove that the shadows looming on the electoral process in Honduras were not suspected.
The web of power: the operation of Trump, Israel and JOH for controlling Honduras
The plot, which is revealed in the audio has an ultimate goal: to ensure the return of Juan Orlando Hernández, president of Honduras in the upcoming elections. As heard in the conversations filtered, the exmandatario not only plan his physical return to the country once they are revoked all judicial proceedings against you, but that is already negotiated with Nasry Asfura a succession agreed. Under this scheme, Asfura would be a president of transition that would pave the way for Hernandez to apply again in the following election cycle. To be concrete, Hernandez would be the principal operator politician Donald Trump and Israeli lobby in the region, a charge of converting to Honduras in a strategic area of military operations, logistics, and economic to the united States, replicating the model of the bases of Palmerola and the ZEDES [Zones for Employment and Economic Development (ZEDEs), or Zonas de Empleo y Desarrollo Económico in Spanish, are highly autonomous, private-sector-led special administrative districts in Honduras designed to attract foreign investment.], but with a power even more concentrated. Not a question only of a restoration staff of power, but of the conversion of the territory of Honduras into a geopolitical enclave fundamental to American interests against China and other powers in Latin America.
If Daily Network you can publish what almost no one else dares, with an editorial line of the left and the rigor periodístico, it is thanks to the support of our partners and members.
1. Voice note from María Antonieta Mejía to Juan Orlando Hernández: “Well, we’re ready. Four more years, we have to keep saying it again. The people want President Juan Orlando. They need him in Honduras. There are hundreds, thousands, millions of people who want Juan Orlando to return. So, Mr. President, you can count on our support.”
The pardon as the payment policytico
The past presidential election of November 30, 2025 in Honduras were contaminated by a number of irregularities; the counting of votes, the results are late, campaigns dirty and especially the interference of the united States cast doubts on the legitimacy of the process.
Hours before the election of November 30, 2025, president Donald Trump announced through their social network to pardon him, to Juan Orlando Hernández, who was sentenced in 2024 to 45 years in prison for conspiring to import cocaine into the united States and for having received money from the ‘Chapo’ Guzman to finance electoral fraud. New York prosecutors had qualified to Honduras as a “narcoestado” [narco-state] during his tenure, while Juan Orlando was accused of accepting millions in bribes from posters to protect them from the law.
In that same announcement, Trump supported explicitly the candidate of the National Party of Honduras [Hernandez’s Party], Nasry “Tito” Asfura, threatening to cut aid if he was not elected. What seemed like a political support hid a deal more sinister: the return of Juan Orlando to the economic and military control of Honduras
2. Voice note from Juan Orlando Hernández: “The pardon money didn’t even come from you. It didn’t even come from you; it came from a group of rabbis and people who supported Israel, and they had previously supported Yani Rosenthal.”
The Operation Return
The audios filtered Channel Network reveal that the pardon was managed through an intense lobbying led by Roger Stone and the main republican in the united States, with the support of the israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. According to the conversations filtered out, the return of the exmandatario to Honduras, the logistics operation and its next presidential candidacy would be funded in its entirety by Israel.
In these audios, the former president is heard coordinating directly with the Counselor Electoral Cosette Lopez-Osorio, president of the National Congress Thomas Zambrano, and the exvicepresidenta María Antonieta Mejia, a plan to eliminate any obstacle in court against him and annihilate the opposition from the spaces of representation.
3. Voice note from Juan Orlando Hernández: “The Prime Minister of Israel is going to give us his support. We are very grateful to him ; they had a lot to do with it. In fact, they had everything to do with my departure and the negotiations.”
The chair “smoke” of Asfura
Although Nasry Asfura stated during the campaign he did not have “any linkage” with Hernandez, the audio shows that his arrival to the presidency was part of a plan crafted by Trump and Hernandez. After the controversial elections of November 30th, Asfura was declared the winner with a 40.27% of the votes without having completed the full count.
Election officials and the outgoing government of Xiomara Castro denounced irregularities, while the united States was restricted by visas to the judges behind the method, including Mario, Morazán and Marlon Ochoa. Just took possession, Asfura traveled to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump, where they would have negotiated an agenda of foreign interests.
4. Voice note of Juan Orlando Hernandez to Nasry Asfura:
“President. Good afternoon. A greeting. Here asking about my case, if you have any resolution, if you have something to me to see if they have advanced to the topic of the Supreme Court of Justice. I want to think that you are not going to take a side against me because, thanks to me, you are sitting in that chair. President, I’m going to be me. And I hope for your support. Because that was what we talked about with president Trump.”
The spoils of war: ZEDES, new military base and IA
The audio confirms that Trump and Netanyahu are looking for a compensation millionaire in exchange for the appointment of presidents. Trading in the residence of Florida included the expansion of the Areas of Employment and Economic Development (ZEDES), the construction of a new military base, a free trade agreement, and a law to encourage investment in Artificial Intelligence (AI), whose contracts were to be delivered directly to private companies to Americans, such as General Electric.
The ZEDES, known as “the private” or “model cities”, have been cited by allowing courts self-employed persons and foreign legal systems in national territory, so that civil society organizations denounce as a surrender of sovereignty.
5. Voice note from Nasry Asfura to Juan Orlando Hernández
“Mr. President, it ’s a pleasure to greet you. We already had a private session with investment groups, and they are very positive about the expansion of the ZEDE in Roatán and in Comayagua, as well as Palmerola. We’re going to move another Palmerola project specifically to Roatán , where it’s thriving. A base, uh, we’ve already negotiated that. Also, the interoceanic highway . We ’re going to hand it over to General Electric.”
The Lawfare against the Honduran democracy
The main operator of this network is Juan Orlando Hernandez. The audio files show him to give direct orders to Tomás Zambrano, president of the National Congress, to abolish the coordination with the President-elect Asfura and accelerate the political trials to political actors who alleged electoral irregularities but also those who would have the power to keep the judgments, to JOH.
Policy coordination for the implementation of the Lawfare is evident when under pressure from the Counselor Cosette Lopez, Congress acted for the removal of the political. On 16 April, with 88 votes in favour, the chamber dismissed Marlon Ochoa (CNE), Mario Morazán, Lourdes Maribel Mejia and Gabriel Gutierrez of the Court of Electoral Justice (ECJ). Previously, on march 25, the purge had reached the Attorney General Johel Zelaya and the resignation under duress of the President of the Supreme Court, Rebekah Ráquel Obando.
It is a political operation of Lawfare in the Honduran institutions they are acting against the very legality of the country to eliminate political opponents.
6. Voice note from Juan Orlando Hernández to Tomás Zambrano: “Follow my advice, but understand. You have to regain all the power. And you’re going to do it, because the President isn’t going to do it. The President is busy, traveling here and there. Making friends. And the aid I’m sending. I sent you people from Israel, they sent you money. I’m lobbying here, well. So you look at who ‘s really advising you correctly. He’s not a politician , man. He ‘s popular, but he’s not a politician.”
This case, which shakes the foundations of Honduran democracy, exposes a dangerous plot where the economic and political power of transnational forces imposes on the will of the people. Honduras now faces the urgent need to investigate these leaks and prevent the return of Juan Orlando Hernández, the consolidation of a dictatorship, funded by foreign interests seeking to turn the country into an enclave of geopolitical control over us.
7. Voice note of Juan Orlando Hernández
“A lot of worries. It’s all going to be okay, we’re going to be fine. Juan Orlando back soon. Excellent news. Good news, good news. Juan Orlando is coming back to presidency, keep that in mind.”
TOMORROW: Audios that prove the Hondurasgate scandal extends to Mexico and Colombia
Yandex autotranslated into English as:
reported:
EXCLUSIVE New audios from Hondurasgate: Trump’s plot orchestrated by Juan Orlando Hernández put Mexico and Colombia in the spotlight
The second leak of Hondurasgate audio recordings, which Canal Red has exclusively obtained, exposes the United States’ plan to destabilize the governments of Mexico and Colombia, with a media disinformation strategy coordinated from the US presidency and Javier Milei’s presidency of Argentina. …
Juan Orlando, Trump’s operative against Mexico and Colombia
The leaked audio recordings of conversations between Hernández, Nasry Asfura, and Vice President María Antonieta Mejía reveal the formation of a communications team financed with Honduran public funds and contributions from Javier Milei’s government exceeding half a million dollars. Their objective: to launch a media attack against the governments of Gustavo Petro in Colombia and Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico.
The operation is not a coincidence. In 2025, Trump publicly accused Petro of being “the leader of drug trafficking” and hinted at a possible ground intervention in Mexico to “combat” the cartels. The Hondurasgate audios we published today implicate several Honduran political figures in these interference operations, assembling and financing a team to produce fake news with people close to Donald Trump. According to the audios, Javier Milei allegedly participated in financing the operation. …
Audio: Call between Juan Orlando Hernández and Nasry Asfura, January 30, 2026
JOH: “I need you to please send about $150,000 to Rosales’ account, because we’re going to rent an apartment here and set up an office there to establish a Digital Journalism Unit. Someone else from here, from the US President’s team, will manage it. Well, he ‘s one of the Republicans who are helping us. They’re going to set up a news site where they’ll publish important information about Manuel Zelaya and Xiomara Castro.”
…
—————
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
