With the pardon granted by convicted US President Donald Trump to drug trafficker and former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, other dirty tricks filed away in the record of State Department Secretary Marco Rubio have resurfaced.
Democratic congressmen and experts on US politics assert that the Honduran drug trafficker’s release was proposed to Trump by the corrupt State Department Secretary, Marco Rubio.
After granting the pardon and following international condemnation of Hernández’s acquittal, Trump himself claimed that he didn’t know or have much knowledge of who this individual really was. Of course, Rubio knew him well.
Let’s remember that Hernández was imprisoned in the United States with a 45-year sentence imposed by judges in the Southern District of New York for the crime of exporting and smuggling 400 tons of cocaine into U.S. territory.
In a blatant contradiction and displaying a lack of political morality, Trump accuses Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, without evidence, of leading a drug cartel and has launched a war against that nation with the declared intention of seizing all of its oil and mineral wealth.
But let’s return to Marco Rubio, whose relationship with the former Honduran president and the powerful lobbying firm BGR Group has been documented for years.
An investigative report by VICE magazine revealed that Juan Orlando Hernández signed a contract in early 2020 with the lobbying firm BGR Group, founded by Republican billionaire Haley Barbour, for a total of $660,000. The contract aimed to bolster his image in Washington as a reliable ally and a fighter against organized crime. VICE is a magazine founded in 1994 in Montreal, Canada, and currently based in New York.
At that time, the president’s legal situation was beginning to unravel, as his brother, Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernández, was sentenced to life imprisonment for trafficking tons of cocaine into the United States for over a decade.
Although Juan Orlando denied the accusations that arose in that and other trials, testimonies gathered by U.S. prosecutors indicated that the then-president not only knew about, but also participated in and received bribes to finance his campaigns.
In that environment, the BGR Group launched a full-blown publicity machine in favor of the Honduran president, contacting congressional staff, distributing press releases, organizing meetings, and reinforcing the perception of Hernández as a reliable partner of Washington.
And here the name of Marco Rubio appears again, who, according to the VICE report, is historically one of the main beneficiaries of BGR Group’s political contributions.
The firm organized fundraising events for Rubio during his 2010 and 2016 Senate campaigns, as well as his short presidential campaign. After signing the contract with Honduras, BGR contacted 11 congressional employees; three had worked directly with Rubio.
In other words, the Hernández government paid a firm closely linked to a politician who today, from the State Department, participates in defining foreign policy toward Latin America, in which he is trying to implement the nefarious Monroe Doctrine.
Back in April 2018, Rubio, then a senator from Florida, tweeted, “Thanks to Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández for leading the drug traffickers,” accompanied by a photo of the two men together.
The current US Secretary of State was a frequent visitor to the drug trafficker during his second term, obtained fraudulently but with the backing of the Organization of American States (OAS), then headed by the far-right Luis Almagro. During one of his visits, Rubio praised the “fight against drugs” waged by Hernández’s government, while his brother, Juan Antonio, was flooding the United States with tons of drugs.
Rubio’s congratulations to Juan Orlando for his fight against drugs cannot be attributed to mere naiveté, because the far-right politician’s life is intimately linked to drug trafficking.
When Rubio was just 16 years old, his brother-in-law, Orlando Cicilia, was arrested in 1987 for trafficking a massive drug shipment valued at $15 million. Cicilia lived with Rubio’s sister, Barbara, very close to the house where Marco lived with his parents. At the trial in 1989, Rubio, then 18, refused to testify about whether he or his family had received money from Cicilia.
The drug trafficker, who was sentenced to 25 years in prison, was released after 12 years following a plea deal. Immediately afterward, his brother-in-law, who was then a member of the Florida House of Representatives, used his position to secure Cicilia a real estate license. These tangled connections led to Rubio being known in Miami as Narco Rubio.
Therefore, his business dealings and friendship with drug trafficker Juan Orlando Hernández are considered just another operation in his long history of lies, corruption, and connections with drug lords.
(*) Hedelberto López Blanch is a renowned Cuban journalist. He writes for the newspaper Juventud Rebelde and the weekly Opciones. He is the author of “Cuban Emigration to the United States,” “Secret Stories of Cuban Doctors in Africa,” and “Miami, Dirty Money,” among others.
SPECIAL THANKS TO THE AUTHOR: Hedelberto López Blanch
[ SOURCE: RESUMEN LATINOAMERICANO Y DEL TERCER MUNDO CUBA / EN RESUMEN ]
