Leaked audio recordings published by a digital outlet reveal an alleged plot involving the United States, Israel, Honduras and Argentina to destabilize leftist governments in Latin America, one of the people responsible for releasing them said Friday. Former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, who was pardoned by Donald Trump while serving a 45-year prison sentence for drug trafficking, is at the center of the revelations by Diario Red, founded by former Spanish vice president Pablo Iglesias.
“What the audios reveal is that the United States, under Trump, and Israel, under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, developed a corruption network” to turn Hernández into “one of their main operators to position their interference” in the region, Valeria Duarte, coordinator of the investigation, said.
In the recordings, a man who Diario Red and the website Hondurasgate.ch say is Hernández allegedly speaks with Honduran President Nasry Asfura and several Honduran politicians, telling them that his pardon was the result of Israeli lobbying. “The prime minister of Israel is going to support us. We are very grateful to him. They had a lot to do with it. In fact, they had everything to do with my release and the negotiation,” the voice says in a recording dated January 20.
“That is clearly not my voice,” Hernández responded on X, while Asfura has remained silent. The conversations took place on WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram between January and April, and their authenticity was verified using Phonexia Voice Inspector voice-analysis software, Duarte said.
Hernández was pardoned on the eve of the 2025 elections, which Asfura narrowly won amid threats from Trump to cut aid to Honduras if he was not elected. Hernández is now free in the United States. In another audio from January 30, in what the outlet says was a conversation between Asfura and Hernández, the former president asks the current leader for $150,000 to “set up an information cell” in the United States.
“Files are coming against Mexico and Colombia,” the former president allegedly says. In another conversation with Honduran Vice President Antonieta Mejía, he says Argentine President Javier Milei will contribute $350,000 to the project and help “remove the cancer of the left” in Latin America.
In the recordings, Hernández allegedly claims Asfura owes him the election and says he will return to Honduras. After the revelations, Colombian President Gustavo Petro asked Wednesday on X why Netanyahu would “pay to free a major drug trafficker.”
That same day, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum attributed the alleged plot to an effort by the “international right” to spread falsehoods, saying it would not “make a dent” in her government.
The authenticity of the audios were unable to independently verified
