In light of President Donald Trump’s pardon, the US Court ​of Appeals for the Second Circuit dismissed an appeal from former Honduran president ‌Juan Orlando Hernandez, and vacated a previous judgement against him on Wednesday.

The court found that the pardon rendered the appeal of the conviction moot, and dismissed it. For the same reason, the court vacated his conviction and remanded the case to the lower court with orders to dismiss.

Hernandez, speaking ⁠in a video that was played at a press conference in ​Honduras, celebrated the court order. He thanked Trump for the pardon, saying, “It is a complete clean slate, it is total justice.”

In 2024, a New York court convicted Hernandez of smuggling 400 tons of cocaine into the US, along with possession of machine guns, fining him $8 million and sentencing him to 45 years in prison.

However, President Donald Trump pardoned Hernandez in November 2025. Trump justified the pardon by calling the original investigation a “Biden administration set up,” adding that “they basically said he was a drug dealer because he was the president of the country.”

In an amendment to Senate Bill 1383, the Veterans Accessibility Advisory Committee Act of 2025, Vermont Senator Peter Welch (D), said that Hernandez led one of the largest and most violent drug rings in the world. Welch condemned his pardon, saying that it was “an affront to the Federal law enforcement…weakens the rule of law, and severely harms the credibility of the United States in combating drug trafficking.”