When former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández was sentenced to 45 years in prison by U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel in June 2024, there was a sense among many—both in Honduras and the United States—that justice, at last, had caught up with a man described as a "two faced politician hungry for power." According to MS NOW, Castel was unsparing in his assessment: Hernández knowingly facilitated a vast drug trafficking conspiracy, enabling violence, addiction, and incarceration on both sides of the border. His actions, Castel said, "facilitated disease, addiction, violence, and incarceration that accompanies cocaine trafficking in communities within the United States."
For Hondurans who had long witnessed impunity for powerful figures, there was hope that this conviction would signal a turning point. As Helena Olea, deputy director of advocacy group Alianza Americas, told MS NOW, "It also meant for the Honduran people, the feeling or the expectations that justice would be done somewhere, that these levels of impunity would not continue."
But less than 18 months after that landmark sentencing, the sense of closure abruptly vanished. President Donald Trump, in a move that stunned legal experts and career law enforcement officials, pardoned Hernández and freed him from federal prison. The decision, as MS NOW reported, came after Trump’s longtime adviser Roger Stone—himself a recipient of presidential clemency—delivered a letter from the former Honduran leader, who continued to insist on his innocence.
Trump’s explanation for the pardon was as controversial as the act itself. "Many of the people of Honduras, they said it was a Biden setup," Trump said, according to MS NOW. "They basically said he was a drug dealer because he was the president of the country." Yet the facts told a different story: the case against Hernández was initiated during Trump’s own first term, prosecuted by career Justice Department officials, and included direct evidence of Hernández accepting bribes from drug lords. According to multiple sources involved in the case, American domestic politics played no role in the investigation or prosecution.
The clemency decision left many in law enforcement baffled and deeply frustrated. Thomas Padden, a former Justice Department prosecutor who supervised the Hernández investigation, told MS NOW, "It makes you wonder what was going on that the president of the United States would pardon somebody who was convicted with overwhelming evidence and did so much harm to people in his country and the United States." A former DEA agent, speaking anonymously, called it "a travesty." The timing of the pardon was especially perplexing, coming just a month before Trump authorized a risky U.S. military operation targeting Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro on nearly identical drug trafficking charges. The same senior DEA agent had led both investigations, underscoring what many saw as a contradiction in U.S. policy.
Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina was among those left scratching their heads. "It’s confusing to say on the one hand we should potentially even consider invading Venezuela for drug traffick[ing], and on the other hand let somebody go," he told MS NOW before the Venezuela operation.
This episode is only one chapter in what many experts, including those cited by MS NOW, have called the most unpredictable and controversial use of presidential clemency in American history. Since returning to office in 2025, Trump has wielded his pardon power with a frequency and audacity unseen in past administrations. He’s granted clemency to a diverse roster: a Chinese crypto billionaire, a former Colorado elections clerk convicted of breaching election security, and at least 169 people convicted in the January 6 Capitol riot, among others. Many of these individuals had not served most of their sentences, nor had they expressed remorse—criteria that, for decades, were standard for consideration.
Even more striking, as The Trace revealed, is the financial impact of Trump’s pardons on the Crime Victims Fund, a federal pool established in 1984 by the Victims of Crime Act (VOCA). The fund, sustained by fines and penalties from federal convictions—often in white-collar cases—supports a nationwide network of domestic violence shelters, rape crisis centers, and child abuse treatment programs. It also reimburses victims for medical expenses, funeral costs, and lost wages.
Trump’s second-term pardons have forgiven at least $113 million in fines and penalties that would otherwise have flowed into the fund. The most significant loss came from his pardon of HDR Global Trading Limited, owner of the BitMEX crypto exchange, which had been ordered to pay a $100 million fine for anti-money laundering violations. Trump issued the pardon just hours before the payment was due, ensuring the money never reached the Crime Victims Fund.
This shift is not just about the numbers. As Steve Derene, co-founder of the National Association of VOCA Assistance Administrators, explained to The Trace, "Just a couple settlements can really mean the difference in keeping this fund afloat." Historically, two-thirds of all money deposited into the fund has come from only 90 cases. Now, with Trump’s pardons including "remission of any and all fines"—a phrase absent from his first-term pardons but present in about a third of his recent ones—the fund’s future is in jeopardy.
The consequences are real and immediate. From 2021 to 2024, allocations from the Crime Victims Fund dropped from $3.7 billion to $2.2 billion—a roughly 40% decrease, according to federal data cited by The Trace. Programs in Maine, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and New Mexico have reported significant shortfalls or cuts. In Oklahoma, some VOCA-funded programs saw their funding slashed by 80% over the past decade. In Pennsylvania, domestic violence programs faced a 7.5% reduction for the coming year. Sexual assault survivor organizations in New Mexico appealed to the state for emergency funding to cover a $2 million VOCA shortfall.
"The decline in VOCA funding has created significant uncertainty for victim service providers," said Michaela Weber, executive director of Victim Support Services in Washington state, to The Trace. "For organizations like ours, it means making difficult decisions about staffing, capacity and how many victims we can realistically serve at any given time."
Experts warn that Trump’s pardons may also discourage federal prosecutors from pursuing the very cases that generate large fines, further threatening the fund’s revenue stream. "We don’t know what cases they’re not bringing," Derene told The Trace. And while the fund’s balance was over $3.6 billion as of February 2026, historical data show it plunged during Trump’s first term, falling from $13 billion at the end of Obama’s presidency to $3 billion when Trump left office in 2021.
While Congress is weighing the Crime Victims Fund Stabilization Act—which would allow the fund to access money from government fraud convictions—the bill has yet to clear the Senate. Meanwhile, the Justice Department, under pressure from Senate Republicans, has tried to improve fine collection, but billions remain unpaid.
Critics, including former DOJ pardons attorney Elizabeth Oyer, argue that Trump’s approach has created a "pay-for-play clemency system" that benefits those with political connections or the means to hire lawyers close to the president. "He is putting himself in a position where he is giving clemency to people he’s got business relationships with, and that is benefiting himself and his family and his friends tremendously," Oyer told MS NOW. "It has really become just a very corrupt pay-for-play system."
As the nation grapples with the consequences of these sweeping clemency decisions, the effects ripple outward—from victims’ advocates struggling to keep their doors open, to prosecutors weighing whether their efforts will be undone by a presidential signature. The debate over the limits and ethics of presidential pardon power is far from settled, and the stakes—for justice, for victims, and for the public trust—have perhaps never been higher.