Former Honduras president Juan Orlando Hernández recently thanked God and Donald Trump – in that order – for being pardoned by the latter of a drug trafficking conviction won by federal US prosecutors less than two years earlier.

Speaking in a video posted to social media and referring to the US president, Hernández eventually said Trump “changed my life, and I’ll never forget that”. But first he praised God, saying in Spanish, “You saw the injustice and suffering, and in your infinite mercy you helped us.”

“Thanks to you, Lord, today I’m a free man,” Hernández said while delivering his first remarks since his 1 December pardon. “I never lost the faith.”

Hernández then expressed “profound gratitude” to Trump for, as he put it, having the “courage to defend justice and to fulfill his promise that never again would the immense power of the state be used to pursue political opponents”.

Within a day of Hernández’s Friday publication of the video, a judge blocked Trump justice department prosecutors from accessing materials belonging to a key ally of former FBI director James Comey – a political enemy of the US president whom the White House has been trying to criminally prosecute, saying he previously lied to Congress.

Hernández subsequently echoed some of Trump’s oft-invoked rhetoric to explain his own legal troubles, saying he was subjected to a corrupt prosecution stemming from a conspiracy engineered by Joe Biden’s presidential administration as well as operators of the so-called deep state. He maintained that the purported conspirators were upset with him for trying to crack down on organized crime in Honduras while he was president there.

“They wanted to assassinate my morale, erase my name, and sully my legacy,” said Hernández, Honduras’s president from 2014 to 2022. “Their objective was clear: get me out of the way [and] eliminate the leader who defended law and order.

“If I’ve learned something, the truth can be silenced for a time – but it can’t be erased. Today I embark on the task of ensuring that the truth is heard.”

Hernández restricted replies to his video on X, allowing only accounts whom he tagged to comment on it. Among the accounts tagged were those of a handful of Trump allies, including White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, presidential pardon attorney Ed Martin, conservative political strategist Roger Stone, and former congressman Matt Gaetz.

There were no replies visible underneath Hernández’s video. But there had been a community note appended accurately saying in Spanish: “Hernández is not innocent. He was found guilty and sentenced [in connection with] … drug trafficking charges, according to the US justice department.”

The community note linked to a justice department news release announcing a 45-year prison sentence that Hernández was given in June 2024.

In that case, prosecutors maintained that Hernández accepted $1m from former Mexican cartel kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán in 2013 while successfully running for his first Honduran presidential term. They also said that Hernández’s government set up Honduras to serve as a pivotal waypoint – or “superhighway” – of cocaine coming from South American nations including Colombia and Venezuela.

Hernández was extradited to the US to face the drug and related weapons charges in April 2022, roughly three months after finishing his second presidential term. A jury convicted him on 8 March 2024 after a three-week trial.

He was being held at a federal prison in West Virginia when Trump pardoned him, leading to his release from custody by Tuesday.

Trump’s pardon caused a political uproar for a couple of reasons. For one, it came as the US president waged a “war on drugs” with airstrikes on accused traffickers in the Pacific as well as the Caribbean – and the positioning of an American naval force off the coast of Venezuela.

“If President Trump actually wants to send a strong signal to … heads of states involved in narco-trafficking, pardoning one of the most recent grotesque offenders … is exactly the wrong message,” US senator Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat, told CNN in what was a typical reaction to the clemency afforded to Hernández.

Hernández, furthermore, was pardoned amid an unusual level of US interference in the Honduras presidential election. In that race, which as of the weekend was considered too close to call, Trump endorsed Hernández’s ally Nasry “Tito” Asfura, saying victory by Asfura was required for US aid to Honduras.

Asfura’s main electoral rival, Salvador Nasralla, told Reuters that Trump’s involvement in the election had substantially “hurt” his chances of winning.