For Honduras JOH Brother Tony, US Wants Life & $149M & CJA Fees Amid Fuente Trial With Audio Cut

The US sentencing memo cites El Chapo and attaches a Honduras human rights bill introduced in the U.S. Senate

By Matthew Russell Lee, PatreonSongFiling
BBC - Guardian UK - Honduras - ESPN

SDNY COURTHOUSE, March 17 – Honduras President Juan Orlando Hernandez took a briefcase of cash and said he would stuff drugs up the noses of the gringos, a jury was told on March 16, 2020. The audio call-in line, at the demand of the prosecutors was cut off. But Inner City Press live tweeted it, morning here and then the afternoon, about the video(s), here and below.

  Also on March 16, the US Attorney's Office filed its sentencing memo for JOH's brother Tony Hernandez, previously convicted in a jury trial also covered by Inner City Press. The US is asking for life in prison, and money: "The defendant was a Honduran congressman who, along with his brother Juan Orlando  Hernandez, played a leadership role in a violent, state sponsored drug trafficking conspiracy. Over  a fifteen-year period, the defendant corrupted the democratic institutions of Honduras to enrich  himself by transporting at least 185,000 kilograms of cocaine—a staggering amount of poison that  he helped import into the United States. To accomplish this astonishing level of drug distribution,  the defendant commanded heavily armed members of the Honduran military and Honduran  National Police, including Juan Carlos “Tigre” Bonilla and Mauricio Hernandez Pineda; he sold  machineguns and ammunition to drug traffickers, some of which he obtained from the Honduran  military; he controlled cocaine laboratories in Colombia and Honduras; he bribed politicians,  including past and current presidents of Honduras; and he helped cause at least two murders.  The defendant made at least $138.5 million in blood money through this egregious course  of conduct. He also abused his political and social position to facilitate these drug-trafficking  activities in a country that has been ravaged by drug-related violence. Between 2004 and 2019,  the defendant secured and distributed millions of dollars in drug-derived bribes to Juan Orlando  Hernandez, former Honduran president Porfirio Lobo Sosa, and other politicians associated with  Honduras’s National Party.

Prior to 2012, as a politically connected Honduran citizen operating  in Honduras, the defendant acted with confidence that he could not be held accountable for his  crimes in the United States. The Honduran constitution forbade it. When Honduras amended its  constitution to permit extraditions in 2012 based on pressure from the United States, the defendant  sought to exploit his political connections to achieve additional protection. The next year, he  funneled a $1 million bribe from Joaquín Guzmán Loera, a/k/a “El Chapo,” (“Chapo”), the leader  of the Sinaloa Cartel, to Juan Orlando Hernandez. In 2014, the defendant was caught on tape  meeting with one of the most violent drug traffickers in Honduras to discuss providing Honduran  government contracts to drug traffickers in exchange for massive bribes.  The defendant has done nothing to mitigate his abhorrent criminal conduct. Instead of  showing remorse for his crimes, the defendant has repeatedly lied, minimized, and obstructed  justice. To give some examples, the defendant (i) brazenly traveled to the United States in 2016  and lied to law enforcement about his drug-trafficking activities; (ii) lied about his assets during a  January 2019 bail hearing; (iii) leaked sensitive witness information in violation of a protective  order in October 2019; and (iv) lied again about his assets during an application for appointed  counsel in February 2020.  The defendant’s conduct was, and continues to be, extraordinary.

The Probation Office  has recommended a within-Guidelines sentence of life imprisonment, and such a sentence is  appropriate based on the § 3553(a) factors. The defendant trafficked cocaine on a monumental  scale, corrupted his elected office, contributed to the already deteriorating conditions in Honduras,  and repeatedly lied to the Court. Accordingly, the Government respectfully submits that the Court  should impose a sentence of life imprisonment and order the defendant to forfeit $138.5 million,  return all funds disbursed pursuant to the Criminal Justice Act (“CJA”), and pay a $10 million fine." Full memo on Patreon here.

A question now: Does the right to access to Federal court proceedings extend to listen-only telephone lines, in the time of COVID and beyond? Should it?

 The question has been further raised in the ongoing Honduras narco-trafficking case US v. Geovanny Fuentes, which Inner City Press has been covering in-person in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, where it is "in-house press."

   On the morning of March 13, Inner City Press filed a challenge to the cut-off of audio access to the US v. Fuentes trial, citing the First Amendment, COVID and real-world politics, see here and below.

  Late on the evening of March 14, the US Attorney's Office filed a three page letter into the docket, specifically arguing the the call-in line be eliminated for two entire Witnesses and everything they say. US Attorney's Office's letter, now uploaded on Inner City Press' DocumentCloud, here.

 Inner City Press has immediately responded in opposition, here, stating among other things that "the US Attorney's Office seeks to specifically ban public access to two of their Witnesses, while saying that a transcript would be available at some unspecified date afterwards. Given that the Office has yet to unseal improperly redacted portions of their filings, there is little reason to have confidence in the speed of transcription, or that such transcripts would not be too expensive for the public or media. 

Inner City Press after its first filing waited nine hours, including this song, here, to report about it. Full first letter on Inner City Press' DocumentCloud, here.

  Inner City Press itself obeys all existing rules and is grateful for the additional access as in-house media (particularly since it is banned from covering the UN, which now Constitutional rights such as the First Amendment exist).

  But others have rights too - including journalists and regular citizens of Honduras. If the SDNY prosecutors are going to exercises essentially universal jurisdiction for any wire transfer that passes through lower Manhattan, how ever briefly, they should not oppose access to their trials by those impacted, for better and worse.

Judge Castel is a good judge, in Inner City Press' experience. When petitioned he has ordered the unsealing of certain court documents, in a North Korea crypto-currency conference case and the tech / child sex sentencing of Peter Bright former of ArsTechnica, both of which Inner City Press covered and requested. And Judge Castel is certainly in the mainstream in his March 12 psoition. But should it be rethought? Is there a right? Should there be? Watch this site.

The case is US v. Diaz, 15-cr-379 (Castel).

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