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Donald Trump has accused officials in Honduras of “trying to change” the result of the country’s presidential election, as the release of vote counts was paused with two rightwing candidates locked in a technical tie.
The virtual vote count had been slow and unstable before it was interrupted around midday on Monday. The electoral court said a technical problem was to blame and insisted the manual count was continuing.
On his social network, Trump accused officials of “trying to change the results” and warned that “if they do, there will be hell to pay!”.
It was the latest in a string of dramatic interventions by the US president. Before the vote, Trump had thrown his support behind Nasry “Tito” Asfura – who on Monday was ahead of his rival, Salvador Nasralla, by just 515 votes – saying that US support for the country was conditional on an Asfura victory.
He also made the extraordinary pledge to pardon Asfura’s ally, the former president Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted of drug trafficking in a New York court last year and sentenced to 45 years in prison for allegedly creating “a cocaine superhighway to the United States”.
As election officials pleaded for patience on Tuesday, Hernández’s wife, Ana García de Hernández, disclosed that the former president had been released from a US prison.
“God is faithful and never fails! Yesterday, Monday 1 December 2025, we lived a day we will never forget. After almost four years of pain, waiting and difficult trials, my husband, Juan Orlando Hernández, became a free man AGAIN, thanks to the presidential pardon granted by President Donald Trump,” she wrote.
Trump’s pardon has baffled many observers, who have questioned why the US president has used his “war on drugs” to justify overthrowing Venezuela’s dictator, Nicolás Maduro, while simultaneously freeing a man convicted of such crimes.
In Honduras, the pardon has been viewed as yet another attempt by the US president to interfere in the election.
Rixi Moncada, the candidate for the leftwing ruling party, accused Trump of “interventionism” and of “imperial, direct foreign interference” in the electoral process. Moncada served as finance minister under the current president, Xiomara Castro, who could not run again because presidential mandates are limited to a single term.
Before the election, Trump had claimed Moncada was “a communist” and that her victory would hand the country to “Maduro and his narco-terrorists”.
When the release of results was suspended on Monday, Moncada was trailing in a distant third place with 19.16% of the vote. Asfura was on 39.91%, closely followed by Salvador Nasralla, also a rightwinger, on 39.89%.
Nasralla, an experienced politician and TV host who served as Castro’s vice-president before breaking away to launch his own presidential attempt, was labelled by Trump as a “borderline communist” who was running only to split the vote between Moncada and Asfura.
The electoral court has up to 30 days to announce the outcome. All three candidates have voiced concern about the delay and urged greater speed.
“Let’s not keep the country waiting, on edge,” said Asfura.
