Not long ago I wrote of how China’s dominance over critical minerals has transformed these resources into a central national security priority for the United States. As dependence on adversarial supply chains now poses an urgent strategic risk that must be reduced before it can be weaponized.

Throughout history, the greatest powers have risen not simply because they possessed courageous soldiers or brilliant generals, but because they secured the resources necessary to sustain their civilizations during moments of crisis. The Roman Empire depended upon grain from Egypt. Great Britain’s maritime supremacy rested upon coal, iron, and an unrivaled merchant fleet that connected every corner of the globe. During the Second World War, President Franklin Roosevelt transformed the United States into the Arsenal of Democracy because America possessed the industrial capacity and raw materials necessary for the Allied forces to outproduce the Axis powers. Today’s battlefield extends far beyond aircraft carriers, missiles, and satellites. It reaches deep beneath the earth’s surface, where a relatively obscure collection of minerals has become every bit as strategically valuable as oil was during the 20th Century. The nation that controls these materials will enjoy an enormous advantage in military power, artificial intelligence, aerospace engineering, semiconductor manufacturing, quantum computing, and advanced industrial production.

Many Americans understandably ask why the United States cannot simply mine everything it needs within its own borders. The answer lies in a combination of geology, economics, infrastructure, and time. Although America possesses significant deposits of certain critical minerals, many of those reserves remain commercially undeveloped, are difficult to extract economically, or lack the processing infrastructure necessary to transform raw ore into materials suitable for advanced manufacturing. Opening a modern mine frequently requires years of environmental reviews, permitting, engineering, financing, and construction before a single shipment reaches an American factory. Even then, the United States often lacks sufficient domestic refining capacity, forcing raw materials to be processed overseas before they can be incorporated into military equipment or commercial products. Simply put, America currently consumes far more strategic minerals than it can produce and refine on its own. That reality demands a practical strategy rooted in diversification rather than wishful thinking.

This is precisely why recent efforts to secure access to Kazakhstan’s enormous tungsten deposits deserve careful consideration. Tungsten is not a household name, yet it is one of the most strategically indispensable metals on Earth. Derived from the Swedish phrase meaning “heavy stone,” tungsten possesses the highest melting point of any pure metal, exceeding 6,100 degrees Fahrenheit. It is extraordinarily dense, remarkably hard, and exceptionally resistant to heat, wear, and deformation. Those extraordinary physical characteristics make tungsten irreplaceable in countless military and industrial applications. It is used in armor piercing ammunition, missile guidance systems, hypersonic weapons, jet engine turbine blades, rocket nozzles, spacecraft components, advanced machine tools, semiconductor manufacturing equipment, mining machinery, and precision industrial cutting instruments. If steel formed the backbone of the Industrial Revolution, tungsten has become one of the indispensable skeletal structures supporting the technological revolution of the modern age.

The strategic importance of tungsten extends well beyond military hardware. Every sophisticated manufacturing economy relies upon tungsten to produce the machinery that builds other machinery. High precision cutting tools capable of shaping hardened steel, titanium, and aerospace alloys depend upon tungsten carbide because few other materials can withstand the tremendous friction and temperatures generated during modern manufacturing. Semiconductor fabrication facilities use tungsten in integrated circuits and advanced chip production. Energy exploration, medical imaging equipment, aviation, telecommunications, and countless other industries rely upon tungsten’s unique physical properties. Remove tungsten from the global economy, and the intricate machinery of advanced civilization begins to seize like an engine deprived of lubricating oil. It is one of those rare materials whose importance far exceeds public awareness.

Unfortunately, Communist China recognized tungsten’s strategic value decades before much of the Western world awakened to the danger. Through patient planning, state subsidies, acquisitions, and relentless industrial expansion, Beijing now controls roughly 80% of global tungsten production while simultaneously dominating large portions of the processing infrastructure necessary to convert raw ore into finished products. This strategy was neither accidental nor purely commercial. It reflected a sophisticated understanding that controlling indispensable resources creates leverage over nations whose industries cannot function without them. A country need not fire a missile if it can instead interrupt the supply of materials required to manufacture missiles in the first place. Economic coercion, carefully applied, can often achieve objectives that conventional warfare cannot.

Tungsten represents only one piece of a much larger strategic mosaic. Rare earth elements such as neodymium, dysprosium, terbium, praseodymium, yttrium, and gadolinium enable the powerful permanent magnets found in advanced fighter aircraft, submarines, guided missiles, radar systems, robotics, and artificial intelligence hardware. Gallium and germanium remain indispensable for semiconductors, infrared sensors, fiber optic communications, and sophisticated military electronics. Antimony strengthens specialized ammunition and military alloys. Niobium enhances aerospace components capable of withstanding extraordinary stress. Tantalum permits advanced electronic systems to function under extreme conditions. Lithium, cobalt, graphite, nickel, and manganese form the backbone of modern battery technology that powers everything from military drones to energy storage systems. Individually, these names may seem esoteric. Collectively, they constitute the periodic table upon which America’s military superiority and technological leadership increasingly depend.

Lithium deserves particular emphasis because it has become the petroleum of the electrified era. Every serious discussion involving electric vehicles, grid scale battery storage, portable electronics, artificial intelligence infrastructure, autonomous systems, and military energy resilience inevitably returns to lithium. Yet the United States remains heavily dependent upon imports because domestic production cannot presently satisfy projected demand. Argentina, Chile, and Australia possess some of the world’s richest lithium reserves, while Canada and Brazil continue expanding their own production. Developing America’s own deposits remains essential, but even optimistic projections acknowledge that domestic mining alone cannot satisfy near term requirements. Until additional American production becomes operational, partnerships with trusted allies remain indispensable.

The emerging partnerships with nations such as Kazakhstan, Canada, Australia, Chile, Argentina, and Brazil should therefore be understood not as evidence of weakness but as examples of strategic realism. During the Second World War, the Allied victory depended upon an intricate international network supplying aluminum, chromium, manganese, rubber, copper, and countless other strategic materials. No serious historian argues that America should have attempted complete economic isolation while fighting a global war. The same principle applies today. Diversifying supply chains among trusted allies reduces the risk that any hostile power can strangle America’s industrial base through economic coercion. Strategic partnerships strengthen national sovereignty because they reduce dependence upon adversaries rather than increasing it.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has already demonstrated its willingness to employ export controls as instruments of geopolitical leverage. Restrictions involving rare earth elements and other strategic materials have disrupted manufacturing, delayed production schedules, increased costs, and reminded policymakers that economic warfare has become an integral component of modern statecraft. America’s military cannot remain dependent upon supply chains controlled by a geopolitical rival whose long term ambitions increasingly conflict with the interests of the United States and the broader free world. National security in the 21st Century requires more than aircraft carriers, fighter squadrons, and missile defense systems. It requires secure access to the elemental building blocks from which those weapons are manufactured.

The path forward is neither isolationism nor blind globalization. America must aggressively develop its own mines, modernize domestic processing facilities, encourage scientific innovation, strengthen strategic stockpiles, expand recycling technologies, and reduce unnecessary regulatory barriers that delay responsible mineral development. At the same time, the United States must continue forging long term partnerships with friendly nations possessing the resources that America presently lacks in sufficient quantity. This dual strategy combines self reliance with strategic diversification, ensuring that no hostile nation can ever again hold America’s industrial future hostage.

The New Cold War will not be won solely by the nation possessing the largest military budget or the most sophisticated weapons. It will be won by the nation capable of securing the indispensable resources that make those weapons possible in the first place. The minerals buried beneath the soil of Kazakhstan, Australia, Canada, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, and other friendly nations are far more than commercial commodities. They are the raw ingredients of American sovereignty, industrial resilience, technological leadership, and military preparedness. Recognizing that reality today will spare the United States from confronting a far more dangerous reality tomorrow, when rebuilding broken supply chains may prove infinitely more difficult than preserving them now.

History possesses an uncanny habit of placing before each generation a mirror in which it may observe its own courage or its own complacency. Few statutes illustrate that truth more vividly than the Communist Control Act of 1954. Enacted during one of the most dangerous periods of the Cold War, the legislation reflected a bipartisan recognition that communism was not merely another political philosophy competing in the marketplace of ideas. It was understood to be the political instrument of an international revolutionary movement directed from Moscow whose explicit objective was the destruction of constitutional government, private property, religious liberty, and ultimately the American Republic itself.

The lawmakers who approved the Act were hardly naïve reactionaries consumed by paranoia. Many had witnessed firsthand the expansion of Soviet espionage, the betrayal of atomic secrets by ideological sympathizers, the subversion uncovered by congressional investigations, and the systematic infiltration of labor organizations, universities, and government institutions. They understood that the Communist Party of the United States had frequently functioned not as an independent political organization but as an extension of Soviet strategic interests. Congress therefore concluded that the Party should not enjoy the same legal protections ordinarily afforded to legitimate political organizations dedicated to preserving constitutional government.

That determination, however, encountered an increasingly expansive interpretation of the First Amendment. During the following decade, the federal judiciary steadily shifted toward protecting political advocacy, even advocacy advocating profound changes to the American system of government. The Supreme Court’s decision in Brandenburg v. Ohio fundamentally altered the constitutional landscape by holding that speech advocating unlawful conduct could not be punished unless it was intended and likely to produce imminent lawless action. The distinction between advocating an idea and committing a crime became one of the defining principles of modern First Amendment jurisprudence.

As a consequence, the Communist Control Act gradually receded into practical obscurity. Although portions of the statute technically remain within the United States Code, the Act has been rendered largely unenforceable by constitutional precedent and by subsequent congressional action repealing or superseding many of its provisions. It survives more as a historical reminder of Cold War anxieties than as an effective prosecutorial tool.

This legal evolution explains why the Department of Justice (DOJ) today focuses almost exclusively upon criminal conduct rather than ideological affiliation. Federal prosecutors do not initiate cases merely because an individual professes communist, socialist, anarchist, or any other political beliefs. Instead, they require evidence of espionage, terrorism, sabotage, foreign intelligence activity, fraud, conspiracy, violence, or other violations of federal criminal law. The Constitution protects unpopular opinions far more vigorously than many Americans realize.

That constitutional framework also explains why organizations such as the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) continue to operate lawfully despite fierce criticism from conservatives who view many of their policy positions as profoundly harmful. Whether one believes the DSA advocates destructive economic policies or promotes an ever expanding administrative state is ultimately irrelevant to the constitutional inquiry. Under current Supreme Court doctrine, political advocacy remains protected unless it crosses the narrow line into criminal conduct or incitement to imminent violence.

Many Americans understandably find this distinction frustrating. They observe political rhetoric celebrating Marxist thinkers, denigrating capitalism, or calling for sweeping transformations of American institutions and naturally wonder why laws enacted during the Cold War appear dormant. The answer lies not in prosecutorial indifference but in constitutional evolution. The First Amendment, as interpreted over the past half century, has become one of the broadest protections of political speech anywhere in the world.

None of this should be mistaken for a declaration that ideological movements pose no danger. History offers abundant evidence that authoritarian movements frequently advance not through sudden revolutions but through gradual cultural influence, institutional capture, educational indoctrination, and persistent political activism. Americans possess every right to oppose such movements vigorously through elections, public debate, legislative reform, and civic engagement. The Constitution protects the right to advocate against socialism just as fully as it protects the right to advocate for it.

The Communist Control Act therefore stands today as a monument to an earlier era when Congress confronted an external ideological adversary with extraordinary legislative measures. Its practical dormancy reflects not the disappearance of ideological conflict but the triumph of constitutional protections that distinguish between belief and criminal conduct. Whether that balance remains sufficient for the challenges of the twenty first century is a question that belongs not only to lawyers and judges but to every citizen entrusted with preserving the blessings of liberty for generations yet unborn.

Miles Guo was convicted and sentenced to 30 years in federal prison on June 29 in a Manhattan Federal courtroom.

Outside the courthouse, hundreds of his supporters gathered, waiting for a man who had tried to delay his sentencing by claiming illness.

To those he defrauded, he will forever be the man who promoted fraudulent cryptocurrencies and investment schemes on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast and who was now ordered to forfeit $889 million in proceeds from his illegal schemes. 

To his followers, Guo was a fearless fighter against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). In private, quite the opposite.  

According to reporting by Art Voice, the man who built a public empire denouncing communism was heard praising the CCP in private, telling aides “The CCP is great” and that “Communism is better than capitalism.”

Approximately 600 victims submitted letters to the court describing how Guo had scammed them, luring them into investments that ultimately vanished. More than 1,000 people worldwide were affected overall, according to trial evidence. 

U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres noted that Guo has shown no remorse and continues to deny responsibility.

Guo was convicted of racketeering conspiracy, securities fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering. 

Prosecutors said he ran a criminal enterprise that defrauded his followers through deception, threats, and intimidation.

Guo fled China in 2014 amid Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign, which, according to him, hurt people close to him, including a senior intelligence official.

Settling in New York, the self-exiled billionaire, who positioned himself as a fierce critic of communism, purchased a $67.5 million 15-room penthouse at the Sherry-Netherland and reinvented himself as one of the Chinese Communist Party’s most vocal critics in exile.

Guo, essentially a walking RICO case, forged a close alliance with War Room host Steve Bannon and used the podcast to promote fraudulent coins and investment schemes. The pair frequently highlighted their friendship on air to build listener trust, a strategy that contributed to Guo’s eventual 30-year prison sentence.

In 2020, the two men stood side by side and dramatically announced their plan to topple the Chinese Communist Party.

Their partnership was so tight that Bannon was later arrested aboard Guo’s luxury yacht on separate fraud charges tied to the We Build the Wall, a scheme he had heavily promoted on his War Room show.

Steve Bannon was named an unindicted co-conspirator in Miles Guo’s $1 billion fraud case, a detail that continues to raise questions about the depth of their collaboration and why the War Room has continued broadcasting amid the million-dollar scandals involving innocent listeners.

Prosecutors said Guo exploited his large following among conservative audiences and overseas Chinese, turning it into a series of fraudulent investment and cryptocurrency schemes. 

These included GTV Media, pitched as a groundbreaking anti-CCP television network that would deliver uncensored news free from Communist Party control. 

The ventures also encompassed the G|CLUBS membership club and the Himalaya Exchange, all heavily promoted on Steve Bannon’s War Room.

These enterprises raised more than $1 billion between 2018 and 2023, with trial evidence showing that approximately $550 million was stolen or misappropriated. Guo used the funds to purchase a $37 million yacht, a New Jersey mansion, a Lamborghini, designer clothing, and other luxuries.

Notably absent from the scene outside the courthouse was Guo’s longtime associate Steve Bannon. Many continue to question why Bannon has faced no charges related to these activities, despite his prominent role in promoting the ventures and the massive financial losses suffered by supporters, particularly within conservative circles.

Guo will now be transferred to the Federal Bureau of Prisons to begin serving his sentence.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), Chairwoman of the Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets, chaired a high-profile House Oversight Committee hearing on Tuesday, June 30, 2026, titled “Mind Control and Accountability: Uncovering the Truth of the CIA’s MKULTRA Experiments.” The session examined the CIA’s notorious Cold War-era program and its lasting erosion of public trust.

Luna opened by emphasizing the need for transparency, linking the hearing to earlier declassified files and programs like Project Artichoke, which allegedly involved covert drugging through fake vaccines or medical procedures.

MKUltra ran from 1953 to approximately 1973. It involved unconsented human experiments using LSD, electroshock, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, and psychological torture on unwitting Americans, including prisoners, mental health patients, and civilians, as well as subjects abroad. The program was funded by U.S. taxpayers and authorized at the highest levels of the CIA.

Witnesses included historian Stephen Kinzer, author of Poisoner in Chief (which details the life of CIA chemist Sidney Gottlieb), investigative journalist Tom O’Neill, author of Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties, and Dr. Elizabeth Ginexi, Ph.D., former senior program director at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Ginexi focused on broader research ethics and issues of public trust.

A major focus was the deliberate destruction of evidence in 1973. 

As CIA Director Richard Helms prepared to leave office, he ordered the destruction of MKUltra files. An official CIA document states: “Over my stated objectives, the MKULTRA files were destroyed by the order of DCI [Director of Central Intelligence] Mr. Helms shortly before his departure from office.”

During the hearing, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna drew attention to the criminal destruction of records, stressing that the vast majority of MKULTRA files were deliberately kept from public view. 

Helms personally instructed Dr. Sidney Gottlieb to destroy “all files pertaining to drug research and associated activities.” Four people spent an entire day tearing up and burning approximately 152 files. Gottlieb also had his personal papers destroyed. The head of the CIA’s own Records Center protested the destruction in writing but was overruled.

No accountability followed. Helms received only a $2,000 fine for lying to Congress on an unrelated matter and collected his government pension until his death. Gottlieb faced no prison time. 

No victims received formal U.S. government compensation. As Luna and witnesses stressed, this constituted obstruction of justice and criminal destruction of federal records.

Much of what we know today survived by accident. In 1977, a FOIA request uncovered seven misfiled boxes that revealed 149 subprojects, involvement with 80 institutions, and 185 non-government researchers, along with significant CIA funding, including $375,000 for a hospital “safe house” used for unwitting subjects.

Historian Stephen Kinzer described MKUltra as “extreme medical torture.” He testified that Gottlieb operated with a de facto “license to kill,” using “expendables.” Kinzer emphasized cases like Frank Olson and warned of modern risks from advances in neuroscience and AI.

Investigative journalist Tom O’Neill noted that the 1977 congressional hearings misled the public by claiming MKULTRA was a “failure.” He pointed to documents showing the program’s goals of inducing trance states, amnesia, and programmed behavior. O’Neill detailed disturbing connections involving Dr. Louis Jolyon West, including West’s examination of Jack Ruby following the assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald.

When asked whether Jack Ruby and Charles Manson were assets of the intelligence agencies, O’Neill replied: 

“In my expert opinion, I’ve never been able to prove that Jack Ruby was an asset of the intelligence agencies. I believe this is something else. The Warren Commission investigation was led by Allen Dulles, the former CIA director who authorized and ran MKUltra. He was fired by President Kennedy. The liaison to the Commission for the CIA, the one who handled all the information going back and forth, was Richard Helms, who was a direct supervisor [of these programs]. They knew that Dr. West was capable of what they had paid him to do and what he had reported to them that he could do, including inducing mental disorders in people. That was never disclosed to the Commission, as far as anyone knows. So I believe that West was put in there to keep Jack Ruby from telling his story.”

O’Neill also referenced broader links involving CIA Directors Allen Dulles and Richard Helms to the Warren Commission, noting that “the CIA was deeply involved in shaping the official narrative.”

Lawmakers, including Rep. Tim Burchett, pressed witnesses on whether similar mind-control or behavioral manipulation techniques could still be in use today. The witnesses reported seeing no direct evidence of an active MKULTRA-style program, but noted that such methods have likely evolved alongside advances in technology.

O’Neill said he “couldn’t imagine” the agency simply stopped, while Kinzer highlighted how modern neuroscience and artificial intelligence could make such capabilities more feasible than ever. Burchett also inquired about potential connections to recent high-profile incidents, including the assassination attempt on former President Trump by Thomas Crooks and the killing of Charlie Kirk. Witnesses declined to speculate on specific individuals but left open the possibility that similar techniques could continue in new forms.

This hearing was the first major congressional revisit of MKUltra since the 1970s, shining new light on one of the darkest chapters in CIA history.

Rep. Luna and the witnesses condemned the MKULTRA experiments as crimes against humanity. They called for ending remaining redactions, full declassification, victim accountability, and safeguards against recurrence.

She has committed to further CIA follow-up, including examining newly discovered boxes of MKUltra-related files, and pledged that the Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets would continue pushing for complete transparency.

His court-appointed counsel had only 28 days to prepare for trial.

Part 1 made the geopolitical argument for Trump’s pardon of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez.

Part 2 examined the case the Biden Department of Justice put on.

Part 3 examined how the prosecutors lied to secure the trial before a biased judge and an uninformed jury.

Part 4 showed how the prosecutors coached cooperators to lie about ledgers and radar that did not exist.

Part 5 examined the four cooperators — 134 murders between them, 700 tons of cocaine trafficked — whose uncorroborated testimony was the basis for Hernández’s 45-year sentence.

Part 6 documented the eight years of U.S. government praise for Hernández as a counter-narcotics partner that the jury was not allowed to see.

Part 7 documented the false venue stipulation the prosecution used to keep the case in Manhattan before Judge P. Kevin Castel.

Part 8 documented how Castel ensured Hernández had no functional defense lawyer at trial.

This is Part 9.

The United States’ drug trafficking case against former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández was called a trial. It had the forms of a trial. There was a judge. P. Kevin Castel.

There was a jury. There were lawyers. There were witnesses. There was evidence, or what was allowed in as evidence. The trial was in the Daniel Patrick Moynihan U.S. Courthouse in Manhattan.

The case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Jacob Gutwillig, David Robles, Elinor Tarlow, and Kyle Wirshba, under U.S. Attorney Damian Williams, Attorney General Merrick Garland, and Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco.

The Defense That Could Not Be

Hernández’s defense was not, in any functional sense, ready to defend him.

His court-appointed counsel was Renato Stabile, a federal Criminal Justice Act lawyer. Stabile was appointed 28 days before the trial.

The defense said it needed at least six months of preparation, full access to the classified material, and the ability to investigate in Honduras and other foreign jurisdictions. Castel denied the defense’s request for a continuance.

The Trial

The main government witnesses were murderers and drug traffickers.

Four men who had admitted to ordering 134 murders and to trafficking 700 tons of cocaine through Honduras to the United States.

The prosecutors had them testify to two things.

One. That they had personally paid bribes to Hernández, or had witnessed bribes being paid to him, or had received protection from him when he was president.

Two. That Hernández knew about and participated in the cocaine trafficking that was the basis of the federal charges.

Without these two assertions made by cooperators, the federal case against Hernández would not have existed. There was no recording. No financial documents.

The federal tool to incentivize cooperators’ testimony is the § 5K1.1 letter and the Rule 35 motion.

A prosecutor can file a § 5K1.1 letter asking the judge to sentence below the mandatory minimum. A Rule 35 motion does the same thing after sentencing. Both are at the prosecutor’s discretion. Without one or the other, the cooperator faces the mandatory minimum.

The Four Cooperators

Alexander Ardón. Former mayor of El Paraíso, Copán. Admitted to ordering 56 murders. Faced life plus 30 years. Served less than six years and was released.

Devis Leonel Rivera Maradiaga. Former leader of Los Cachiros. Admitted to ordering 78 murders. Faced life plus 30 years. Never sentenced. Has been a federal cooperator for eleven years.

His name does not appear in the federal prisoner database. This suggests he is free and living under an assumed name in the witness protection program.

Luis Pérez. Sinaloa Cartel member. Trafficked 200,000 kilograms of cocaine over seven years. Sentenced to 135 months. After his testimony, the prosecutor filed a motion under Rule 35. Pérez served 6 years and 3 months.

Fabio Lobo. Son of former Honduran president Pepe Lobo. Sentenced to 24 years. Lobo was released after seven years.

There was no recording of any of the alleged meetings between Hernandez and the murderer-trafficker witnesses.

No photographs, bank records, or surveillance footage.

No phone records, emails, or financial traces of the millions supposedly paid to Hernandez.

El Chapo and the Missing Wiretap

The El Chapo allegation should have been easy to corroborate. The DEA had real-time access to El Chapo’s BlackBerry communications throughout 2013. The DEA was reading his texts.

The agent who led the operation that captured El Chapo, Andrew Hogan, has documented the surveillance. The wiretaps captured every other significant transaction in El Chapo’s 2013 communications. The bribes to Mexican governors. The conversations with cartel lieutenants. The drug shipments. The negotiations with rival traffickers.

It did not capture anything related to Hernández.

The cooperator said it happened. The surveillance said it did not.

Ardón’s Two Stories

The Valle Valle brothers were Honduran traffickers in Copán, who controlled a major piece of the cocaine route through western Honduras.

In 2014, within months of becoming president, Hernández extradited them to the United States. They were tried, convicted, and imprisoned in the federal system.

In 2019, at the trial of Tony Hernández, Ardón testified that El Chapo personally delivered the $1 million bribe to Juan Orlando Hernández at a property owned by the Valle Valle brothers.

The story had a problem.

If El Chapo had paid Hernández at a Valle Valle property to protect the trafficking network, why did Hernández extradite the Valle Valles to the United States the following year?

By the time of the trial in 2024, Ardón’s story had changed. He testified that the bribe was delivered at his mother’s house.

The problem the Valle Valle property created was gone.

Castel was the judge in both trials. He let the contradictory testimony stand without addressing the inconsistency for the jury.

The Ledgers Castel Filtered

The government’s evidence against Hernández included drug ledgers seized in 2018 from Honduran trafficker Magdaleno Meza.

There were nine ledgers. The government introduced two at the trial. The two contained the damning entry La JOH.

The government told the jury La JOH was Juan Orlando Hernández.

The defense wanted the jury to see the other seven ledgers. In the other seven ledgers there were entries that contradicted the government’s theory.

Two of the entries read Payment to JOH for fumigation and Payment to JOH for weeding and cleaning of River.

The entries suggested that JOH was not Juan Orlando Hernandez but a Honduran agricultural business performing fumigation and field-clearing work.

In the ledgers the jury did not see, JOH sprayed fields. JOH cleared weeds. JOH cleaned a river.

The government objected to the introduction of the seven ledgers.

Castel sustained the objection.

DX 3519-04

The defense also wanted the jury to see a Honduran law enforcement report — labeled DX 3519-04 — produced in discovery by the government.

DX 3519-04 was a Honduran police investigation report dated October 18, 2018. It analyzed the names and aliases used in the ledgers.

The report identified an entity called P.S. Technologia, which appeared in one of the ledgers. The Honduran investigators traced P.S. Technologia to a woman named Sinia Janeth Hernandez Rivera and to her family.

The Honduran investigators documented that two relatives — Antonio Hernandez Sarmiento and Modesto Antonio Orellana Hernandez — used the alias Tony Hernandez. Another relative, Cristina Janeth Orellana Hernandez, was known as La JOH.

The prosecution had told the Manhattan jury that La JOH in the ledgers meant Juan Orlando Hernández, the former president of Honduras.

La is the feminine article in Spanish. La JOH in a Spanish-language ledger naturally refers to a female. The masculine form would be El JOH.

The prosecution told the jury that La JOH — a feminine construction — referred to Juan Orlando Hernández, a man.

The Honduran investigators had documented that La JOH referred to Cristina Janeth Orellana Hernandez, a woman.

Castel sustained the government’s objection to the introduction of DX 3519-04.

The Video That Did Not Exist

The government called an accountant named Jose Sanchez, who worked at a Honduran rice company called Graneros Nacionales.

The prosecution’s theory was that Geovanny Fuentes Ramírez, the convicted Honduran drug trafficker, used Graneros Nacionales as a financial vehicle to pay bribes to Hernández.

The rice company would issue checks. The checks would look like legitimate business payments. The actual source of the money was Fuentes Ramírez’s drug trafficking.

Sanchez, as the company’s accountant, was the prosecution’s witness to the arrangement.

The bank records, if it were true, would have existed.

Sanchez said there were checks. But the prosecution did not produce the bank records.

The federal prosecutors had subpoena power. They had treaties with Honduras. They had the cooperation of the Castro government, which had extradited Hernández.

If the records existed, the prosecution would have introduced them.

The trial would have had documentary corroboration of Sanchez’s testimony. The prosecution did not produce the bank records. They may not have existed.

The prosecution’s theory of Graneros Nacionales as Fuentes Ramírez’s bribery conduit could have been confirmed or denied by one person. Geovanny Fuentes Ramírez was alive. He was in federal custody. He was reachable. The prosecution did not call him.

The defense, with 28 days, did not have time to interview him, confirm what he would say, and produce him at trial.

The man at the financial center of the Sanchez story never testified about it.

More Sanchez Evidence

Sanchez also told the jury he had a video of Hernández receiving cash from Geovanny Fuentes Ramírez.

If true, it was the smoking gun.

Sanchez said the three USB drives he stored it on were lost.

Sanchez named two people who had handled the video. A Honduran prosecutor named Marlen Vanegas. Sanchez said he had given her a copy. Sanchez said Vanegas had delivered the video to then-Honduran Attorney General Oscar Chinchilla.

The federal prosecutors did not call Vanegas or Chinchilla.

The government offered no explanation for what happened to the alleged recording. Only the accusation remained.

Castel let it in.

The Phone That Did Not Add Up

The government brought in a federal forensic agent who testified about how the cell phone of Geovanny Fuentes Ramírez had been seized and how the data had been extracted using federal forensic tools. How the chain of custody had been preserved. How the Waze app on the phone recorded location data over time.

The agent walked the jury through one entry. Geovanny Fuentes Ramírez had visited Casa Presidencial on May 29, 2019.

The government told the jury this was a meeting with Hernández.

The agent did not walk the jury through the other entries the same forensic extraction had produced.

The same forensic extraction showed Fuentes Ramírez’s phone contacts list, which had an entry for President Juan Orlando with the number 504-999-2677, a number Hernández had stopped using in 2012, seven years before the alleged meeting.

And Hernández’s office was not at Casa Presidencial in 2019. He worked from a different government building. A 2019 visit to Casa Presidencial was not a meeting with Hernández.

The prosecution had access to all of this data. The exhibits the jury saw were the exhibits the prosecution chose to project on the screen.

The Witness Who Never Met Hernández

Four cooperators had testified about bribes.

Ardón said Hernández took money from El Chapo. Rivera Maradiaga said Hernández took money from the Cachiros. Pérez said Hernández took money from a Sinaloa Cartel intermediary. Lobo said Hernández took money through his sister Hilda.

There was no proof other than their good word.

The theory was that Hernández operated Honduras as a narco-state. That required more than bribes. That required a system of protection.

The prosecution needed a witness who could describe the system from the inside. The witness was Giovani Rodríguez, a Honduran former police officer.

Rodríguez testified that he was under the protection of Juan Orlando Hernández.

He testified that he had never met Hernandez. No meeting. No handshake. No conversation. No direct contact.

But he said he was protected by him.

Rodríguez admitted to ordering one murder while a Honduran police officer. He had admitted to trafficking 450 tons of cocaine into the United States. He had admitted to influencing Honduran judges to reverse his criminal conviction and lying under oath in prior proceedings.

He was a Honduran former police officer. He was also a cooperator in all but name. The testimony was what kept him from being indicted himself.

The Rule 33 Ruling

After the conviction, the defense moved for a new trial under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 33.

One of the grounds the defense raised was that DEA Agent Jennifer Taul had testified falsely.

Taul had told the jury that cocaine trafficking through Honduras increased during the years of Hernández’s presidency.

The State Department’s reports said the opposite.

State Department reports documented that cocaine trafficking through Honduras decreased every year during Hernández’s presidency.

The contradiction went to the government’s central account of Hernández’s presidency.

The defense said the jury had heard false testimony. In an earlier SDNY case, the same U.S. Attorney’s Office had presented an expert who said trafficking through Honduras had decreased during Hernández’s presidency.

Now, in Hernández’s trial, the government had put on the opposite story.

Castel said it did not matter.

Castel’s Logic

Castel acknowledged the conflict between Taul’s testimony and the prior testimony.

Castel ruled that even if Taul’s testimony had been false, the contradiction would not have altered the result.

Castel reasoned that if the State Department was right that cocaine trafficking through Honduras decreased during Hernández’s presidency, the decrease proved Hernández was using anti-trafficking policies as cover for trafficking.

Evidence that the defendant publicly fought cocaine trafficking was evidence that he was secretly trafficking cocaine.

Castel’s ruling revealed the structure of the case.

If trafficking increased, Hernández was guilty because he had allowed it.

If trafficking decreased, Hernández was guilty because the decrease proved his anti-trafficking policy was just a cover.

No statistic could help him. No official report could help him.

The case began with men who had confessed to murder. It survived because missing records were treated as irrelevant. Castel let the prosecution build the case it wanted. He kept out what hurt the government.

On June 26, 2024, Judge Castel sentenced Juan Orlando Hernández to 45 years in federal prison.

The next installment will examine what produced the verdict — the judge who was not free, the jury that was not free, and the political project the prosecution served.

Colombian voters handed conservative outsider Abelardo de la Espriella, known colloquially as “El Tigre,” a hard-fought victory in Sunday’s presidential runoff.

In a stunning rebuke to the radical left, Colombian voters handed conservative outsider Abelardo de la Espriella, known colloquially as “El Tigre,” a hard-fought victory in Sunday’s presidential runoff. President Trump, who offered his full-throated endorsement to El Tigre, immediately declared de la Espriella “won easily” and predicted a “much better relationship” between Washington and Bogotá moving forward. Cepeda has refused to concede pending further verification, as current President Gustavo Petro whines about non-existent fraud, but the mandate is clear: Colombia is shutting the door on failed leftist experiments.

The contrast between El Tigre’s electoral mandate and the Petro years could not be sharper. President Trump once called the outgoing president a “sick man” and a “drug-trafficking leader.” Petro responded by comparing President Trump’s immigration policy to the Nazis. After the U.S. operation against Nicolás Maduro in January, President Trump even mused that military action against neighboring Colombia “sounded good.” Those tensions are over. President Trump told a Colombian reporter the relationship between the countries “will be better” because de la Espriella “is going to be a great president.”

De la Espriella ran as an insurgent through his Defenders of the Homeland movement, not as another polished insider. His platform is unapologetic: security first, everything else follows. He promises ten new mega-prisons modeled after Nayib Bukele’s CECOT that will outdo even El Salvador’s model. He will launch military offensives against narco-terrorist groups that refuse to submit, resume aerial fumigation of coca crops, slash government bureaucracy, cut taxes, and fully revive the hydrocarbons sector. Additionally, Colombia will join the “Shield of the Americas” alliance with the United States to crush the cartels. Criminals who reject peace will face decisive action under the law—no more treating narco-terrorist armies as negotiating partners. El Tigre also met virtually with Brazil’s Bolsonaro brothers to begin building a regional conservative alliance grounded in ironclad security, smaller government, and economic freedom.

Left-wing critics warn of a return to “false positives” abuses. De la Espriella answered them directly in his victory speech: he will come down hard on drug traffickers and “bandits,” but always remain within the boundaries of the constitution and the law. That is the deal he offered voters, and they accepted.

What makes de la Espriella formidable is how cleanly he fuses the strengths of the hemisphere’s most effective leaders. He carries Trump’s nationalist directness and contempt for elite gatekeeping—naming leftist ideologues, criminal networks, and the incestuous political class without apology. He channels Bukele’s uncompromising insistence that public order is the precondition for liberty: the simple freedom to leave home, run a business, send children to school, and return home with your family safe. And he wields Milei’s ferocious attack on socialist bureaucracy and market-hostile policies that punish productive citizens. For de la Espriella, security, sovereignty, and economic stagnation are not separate problems. They are one interconnected crisis manufactured by decades of elite failure.

His coalition reflects that clarity. It draws conservatives, working-class voters, entrepreneurs, national-security realists, anti-corruption voices, and independents exhausted by both Petro’s experiments and the old right’s timidity. These Colombians feel unsafe in their own neighborhoods, cheated by a self-serving system, and abandoned by conventional conservatism. They are not looking for the politics of respectability or some bipartisan facade. They want a leader who owes no favors to the political class that has besieged their country. Colombia’s populist moment has arrived.

Abelardo de la Espriella captures the fury, the fear, and the hope of millions who want safety restored, national sovereignty reclaimed, and prosperity finally unleashed. The left fears him because he rejects their ideologies and pays them no lip service. The right fears him because he rejects their good-ol’-boys club. The comparison to Donald Trump is obvious. If Colombians follow de la Espriella’s bold path, they will not only rescue their own nation but help chart a stronger course for the entire hemisphere—one grounded in unity, strength, nationalism, and an unyielding will to deliver for the people.

This victory is the newest domino in a cascade that has already reshaped the Americas. In 2025, right-wing populism posted banner results across the region. In Honduras, conservative National Party candidate Nasry Asfura won a narrow presidential election after a last-minute endorsement from President Trump and a well-timed pardon of former President Juan Orlando Hernandez put him over the top. Chile elected right-wing stalwart José Antonio Kast president, crushing his Communist Party challenger with 58 percent of the vote. Ecuador’s Daniel Noboa secured a full term on a strict law-and-order platform, a decisive break from the leftist governments that had dominated the country for decades. In Argentina, Javier Milei’s La Libertad Avanza party scored a decisive legislative victory with more than 40 percent of the national vote, dramatically increasing its seats in both chambers and firming Milei’s mandate to keep swinging the chainsaw at the bloated state. President Trump’s support, including a timely $40 billion capital injection, helped lock in that momentum.

The underlying driver is hope. After generations of learned hopelessness peddled by socialists to keep power, voters across Latin America have seen that they do not need corrupt bureaucrats or foreign NGOs to thrive. The man who deserves the most credit for this Latin American renaissance is obviously President Trump. His rise showed people across the hemisphere that they did not have to settle for the trash served up by establishment parties every election cycle. They wanted fighters. They are now willing to settle for nothing less. President Trump has also shown more interest in Latin America than his predecessors, understanding that strong conservative governments south of the border mean fewer drugs and fewer migrants crossing into the United States.

The dominos are still falling. With Abelardo de la Espriella’s victory in Colombia, the momentum is unmistakable. The stars are aligning to Make the Americas Great Again. Together, no foreign coalition will be able to stop our collective economic, cultural, and social dominance—and that will be the key to repelling Chinese hegemony from seizing the planet.