{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.kaine.senate.gov/press-releases/video-kaine-speaks-on-senate-floor-denouncing-trumps-bizarre-pardon-of-drug-kingpin-juan-orlando-hernandez-and-illegal-strikes-in-caribbean", "Video: Kaine Speaks on Senate Floor Denouncing Trump\u2019s Bizarre Pardon of Drug Kingpin Juan Orlando Hern\u00e1ndez and Illegal Strikes in Caribbean", "2025-12-02", "2025", "2025-12", "Democrat", "Senate", "VA", "Tim Kaine", "K000384", "www.kaine.senate.gov", "kaine", "https://www.kaine.senate.gov/news", "scraper", "FULL VIDEO IS AVAILABLE HERE.\n\nWASHINGTON, D.C. \u2013 Today, U.S. Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC) and Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, spoke on the Senate floor to denounce President Donald Trump\u2019s pardon of drug kingpin and former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hern\u00e1ndez. Hern\u00e1ndez was tried and convicted by a jury in a U.S. court in 2024 for conspiring to traffic more than 400 tons of cocaine into the U.S. and weapons charges and sentenced to 45 years in prison. According to the evidence presented during his trial, from approximately 2004 to 2022, Hern\u00e1ndez was at the center of one of the largest and most violent drug-trafficking conspiracies in the world and said he wanted to \u201cshove the drugs right up the noses of the gringos\u201d by flooding the U.S. with cocaine.\n\n\u201cJuan Orlando Hern\u00e1ndez is a former President of Honduras, a country I lived in when I worked with Jesuit missionaries in 1980 and \u201881,\u201d said Kaine. \u201cIn a landmark criminal prosecution, he was convicted by a jury in an American federal court of a massive conspiracy to traffic more than 400 tons of cocaine into the United States while he was president of this very poor country.\u201d\n\nKaine continued, \u201cTrial testimony included a witness who quoted Hern\u00e1ndez saying he wanted to \u2018shove drugs right up the noses of the gringos, and they\u2019re never even going to know it.\u2019\u201d\n\n\u201cLast Friday\u2014the day after Thanksgiving\u2014President Trump announced that he would pardon this notorious narco-trafficking kingpin after one year of serving his 45-year sentence in a federal penitentiary,\u201d said Kaine. \u201cThe unconscionable Hern\u00e1ndez pardon followed another Trump pardon of another notorious narco-trafficker. On January 21, 2025\u2014the day after President Trump\u2019s inauguration\u2014he pardoned Ross Ulbricht.\u201d\n\n\u201cPresident Trump is claiming to be taking action to stop the flow of narcotics into the United States. Yet these two outrageous pardons show that he is willing to excuse and free the most notorious narco-traffickers in the world,\u201d said Kaine.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s hard to see any reason for these pardons except that Hern\u00e1ndez and Ulbricht are mega-rich,\u201d said Kaine. \u201cI can\u2019t say for sure what\u2019s going on here, but the pardon of Hern\u00e1ndez is so bizarre, so counter to the President\u2019s stated priorities, that it\u2019s difficult for me to fathom any reason why this would happen other than someone in the Administration was benefiting from it.\u201d\n\nKaine then discussed the ongoing strikes in the Caribbean and Pacific, recent reporting regarding Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth\u2019s order to leave no survivors and a second strike on September 2, and President Trump\u2019s comments today that the U.S. would be moving to land operations soon.\n\nKaine continued, \u201cWe shouldn\u2019t allow our current President\u2014a man perfectly comfortable pardoning a convicted criminal who boasted about \u2018shoving drugs up the gringos\u2019 noses\u2019\u2014to make such a decision on his own.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s time for Congress to reassert the role that was handed to us in a sacred way in the Constitution in 1787 and exercise oversight over this mushrooming military operation in the Americas,\u201d concluded Kaine.\n\nEarlier this year, Kaine railed against President Trump\u2019s decision to pardon Ross Ulbricht, who was serving life in prison after founding the world\u2019s largest online drug marketplace.\n\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T20:09:11Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.kaine.senate.gov/press-releases/video-kaine-speaks-on-senate-floor-denouncing-trumps-bizarre-pardon-of-drug-kingpin-juan-orlando-hernandez-and-illegal-strikes-in-caribbean"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.2874379754066467, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}