How many drug traffickers did Donald Trump Pardon

1. The clearest, highest-profile case: Juan Orlando Hernández

Trump formally pardoned Juan Orlando Hernández — a former Honduran president convicted in U.S. court of conspiring to import hundreds of tons of cocaine and sentenced to 45 years — with the White House action and Hernández’s release reported as occurring on or about Dec. 1, 2025 in multiple sources including the Congressional Research Service summary and Reuters ^{[1] [2]}, and summarized and scrutinized by FactCheck.org and human-rights commentators ^{[6] [7]}.

2. Local reporting identifies at least one U.S. drug kingpin pardon

Local coverage and federal records obtained by U.S. news outlets document a May pardon of a Baltimore drug trafficker described as a multimillion‑dollar kingpin; the local report names the individual and frames him as “one of the largest cocaine and heroin dealers to be arrested by the DEA in recent history” ^[3]. National outlets also picked up the story, situating it among other controversial clemencies.

3. Claims of a broader pattern: “more than 100” pardons tied to drugs and weapons

California’s governor and an accompanying website assert that Trump has pardoned “more than 100 unrepentant and unreformed people convicted of weapons and drug-related crimes,” language that frames these clemencies as part of a larger pattern ^[4]. Independent summaries and aggregated reporting reiterate that Trump’s pardon spree included multiple individuals with drug-related convictions, but the supplied sources don’t provide a verified, source-by-source roster that isolates every person convicted specifically of drug trafficking.

4. Political reaction, context and competing narratives

Critics seized on the Hernández pardon as emblematic hypocrisy given the administration’s public anti‑drug posture and military actions against alleged narcotics operations, arguing the move undermines U.S. credibility and rule‑of‑law efforts in the region ^{[2] [8] [7]}. Supporters and White House statements, and even comments relayed by FactCheck.org, convey Trump’s justification that Hernández was “treated very harshly and unfairly” and portray the pardon as correcting perceived prosecutorial overreach; Roger Stone and other allies were reported to have lobbied for clemency ^{[9] [6] [10]}.

5. Limits of the available reporting and the honest answer

The supplied documents incontrovertibly identify at least two pardons of convicted drug traffickers (Hernández and a Baltimore kingpin) and report claims that many more people with drug- or weapons-related convictions were pardoned ^{[1] [3] [4]}. However, none of the provided sources offers a fully reconciled, itemized list that lets this article produce a precise, definitive count of all individuals convicted specifically of drug trafficking who received pardons; thus the accurate, evidence‑backed response based on the materials given is: at least two confirmed cases, with additional broader counts asserted but not exhaustively documented in the supplied reporting ^{[4] [5]}.

6. Bottom line

Reporting supplied here proves multiple high-profile pardons of people convicted in drug-related cases — notably the former Honduran president and a U.S. kingpin — and shows claims of a much larger tally, yet does not furnish the comprehensive documentation required to state a single, authoritative total; the correct, source‑grounded answer from these documents is: at least two convicted drug traffickers pardoned, with broader tallies reported but not verifiably itemized in the provided sources ^{[1] [3] [4]}.