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Donald Trump has said he will pardon the former president of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted last year for facilitating cocaine trafficking to the US, ahead of a tense presidential election in the Central American country on Sunday.

“I will be granting a Full and Complete Pardon to Former President Juan Orlando Hernandez”, the US president wrote on his Truth Social platform on Friday — as he voiced support for Nasry “Tito” Asfura, the candidate from Hernández’s conservative National party in the presidential race.

Hernández, president from 2014 until 2022, was arrested weeks after leaving office and convicted in a New York federal court in 2024. He is serving a 45-year sentence in the US for helping traffic more than 400 tonnes of cocaine into America.

Trump’s pardon strikes a contrast with the president’s stated mission of cracking down on drug trafficking into the US — including a high-profile campaign to stem the flow of narcotics from Venezuela, in which he has launched missile strikes on boats in the Caribbean and Pacific.

He has ordered a significant naval build-up, which includes the US’s newest and most advanced aircraft carrier, a nuclear-powered fast-attack submarine, a special operations vessel, a dozen other warships and more than 14,000 troops — as well as F-35 fighter jets. The military deployments are widely seen as an effort to force Venezuela’s authoritarian President Nicolás Maduro from power.

Trump maintains that a win for Rixi Moncada, the candidate from the ruling Libre party in Sunday’s general elections in Honduras will allow “Maduro and his Narcoterrorists to take over another country”.

The US president said that “many people that I greatly respect” had told him that Hernández had been “treated very harshly and unfairly”.

Hernández won a controversial second term, amid widespread allegations of fraud, in elections in 2017 that sparked deadly protests.

Honduras, which has a population of 10mn, hosts the most important US military base for trying to disrupt drug networks, but its political system has been corrupted by money from organised crime.

Trump earlier this week took the unusual step of endorsing Asfura in the country’s elections, which analysts say are too close to call.

Ricardo Zúñiga, a former envoy for the so-called Northern Triangle of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador under former president Joe Biden, said the electoral outcome was highly uncertain.

“You have opposition parties that are claiming that the government is already interfering with the election. You have the main institutions for both running and administering and overseeing the election results all called into question by the ruling party. And, of course, terrible polling,” he said. “The true results may never be known because of the dysfunction of the counting system.”

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In a Truth Social post on Friday, Trump said that “democracy is on trial in the coming Elections”.

Salvador Nasralla is also running in the election for the Liberal party, but Trump has slammed him as a “borderline Communist” seeking only to split Asfura’s vote.

“Tito will be a Great President, and the United States will work closely with him in order to ensure the success, with all of its potential, of Honduras!” Trump wrote.