Video: Kaine Speaks on Senate Floor Denouncing Trump’s Bizarre Pardon of Drug Kingpin Juan Orlando Hernández and Illegal Strikes in Caribbean

FULL VIDEO IS AVAILABLE HERE.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC) and Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, spoke on the Senate floor to denounce President Donald Trump’s pardon of drug kingpin and former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández. Hernández was tried and convicted by a jury in a U.S. court in 2024 for conspiring to traffic more than 400 tons of cocaine into the U.S. and weapons charges and sentenced to 45 years in prison. According to the evidence presented during his trial, from approximately 2004 to 2022, Hernández was at the center of one of the largest and most violent drug-trafficking conspiracies in the world and said he wanted to “shove the drugs right up the noses of the gringos” by flooding the U.S. with cocaine.

“Juan Orlando Hernández is a former President of Honduras, a country I lived in when I worked with Jesuit missionaries in 1980 and ‘81,” said Kaine. “In a landmark criminal prosecution, he was convicted by a jury in an American federal court of a massive conspiracy to traffic more than 400 tons of cocaine into the United States while he was president of this very poor country.”

Kaine continued, “Trial testimony included a witness who quoted Hernández saying he wanted to ‘shove drugs right up the noses of the gringos, and they’re never even going to know it.’”

“Last Friday—the day after Thanksgiving—President Trump announced that he would pardon this notorious narco-trafficking kingpin after one year of serving his 45-year sentence in a federal penitentiary,” said Kaine. “The unconscionable Hernández pardon followed another Trump pardon of another notorious narco-trafficker. On January 21, 2025—the day after President Trump’s inauguration—he pardoned Ross Ulbricht.”

“President Trump is claiming to be taking action to stop the flow of narcotics into the United States. Yet these two outrageous pardons show that he is willing to excuse and free the most notorious narco-traffickers in the world,” said Kaine.

“It’s hard to see any reason for these pardons except that Hernández and Ulbricht are mega-rich,” said Kaine. “I can’t say for sure what’s going on here, but the pardon of Hernández is so bizarre, so counter to the President’s stated priorities, that it’s difficult for me to fathom any reason why this would happen other than someone in the Administration was benefiting from it.”

Kaine then discussed the ongoing strikes in the Caribbean and Pacific, recent reporting regarding Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s order to leave no survivors and a second strike on September 2, and President Trump’s comments today that the U.S. would be moving to land operations soon.

Kaine continued, “We shouldn’t allow our current President—a man perfectly comfortable pardoning a convicted criminal who boasted about ‘shoving drugs up the gringos’ noses’—to make such a decision on his own.”

“It’s time for Congress to reassert the role that was handed to us in a sacred way in the Constitution in 1787 and exercise oversight over this mushrooming military operation in the Americas,” concluded Kaine.

Earlier this year, Kaine railed against President Trump’s decision to pardon Ross Ulbricht, who was serving life in prison after founding the world’s largest online drug marketplace.

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