‘Hondurasgate,’ the alleged US and Israeli interference plot to destabilize Mexico and other progressive governments

A leaked audio recording points to former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, Javier Milei, and Donald Trump as attempting to create a platform to spread fake news about the administrations of Claudia Sheinbaum, Lula, and Gustavo Petro

by Andrés Rodríguez

Part 3 - Netanyahu’s intervention

Hernández, known as JOH, was president of Honduras from 2014 to 2022 for the conservative National Party. Those were years of cooperation with the U.S. in the fight against drug trafficking. Or at least, that was the appearance he sought to project. In 2024, he was sentenced in Manhattan to 45 years in prison for associating for more than a decade with drug traffickers who paid him bribes to ensure that more than 400 tons of cocaine reached the northern border of the Rio Grande. Three years earlier, his brother Juan Antonio Hernández had been sentenced to life imprisonment for the same crimes. The New York District Attorney’s Office had accused JOH of receiving $1 million from Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.

According to the same leaks from Hondurasgate, Trump’s pardon of JOH, days before the elections in Honduras, was not a gesture of clemency, but rather the initial payment in a larger agreement. In one of the recordings, Hernández explains it directly, though without revealing his interlocutor: “The pardon money didn’t even come from you. It came from a group of rabbis and people who supported Israel.” In another audio recording, he says that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had “everything to do” with his release and the negotiations that made it possible.

This alleged leak comes at a time when diplomatic relations between Mexico and the United States are at their most strained, due to Washington’s indictment and extradition request against Rubén Rocha Moya, the governor of Sinaloa, and nine other officials for alleged ties to drug trafficking. This is further exacerbated by Trump’s repeated threats to intervene in Mexico against organized crime, something he reiterated this Wednesday.

Trump’s relationship with Petro has also been less than cordial. Despite smoothing things over after his Colombian counterpart’s visit to Washington in February — but not before Petro had his visa revoked and was called a “narco” by the Republican — pressure remains on both the United States and Mexico to implement tougher and more effective policies against drug trafficking.

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Source, links:

https://english.elpais.com/international/2026-05-07/hondurasgate-the-alleged-us-and-israeli-interference-plot-to-destabilize-mexico-and-other-progressive-governments.html

 

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