While millions of people, watched in horror a security camera video of Nery López,a drug trafficker,and a witness against Honduran president’s brother,being shot and stabbed to death by five assailants in a maximum-security Santa Barbara prison. In contrast to this I did not see a video from the cell of pedophile to the presidents and princes, Jeffrey Epstein, as he was suicided in his cell under a 24-hour suicide watch. Here in Honduras at least we saw the cruel reality that surrounds us.
“If you steal a chicken they’ll put in jail for life, but if you steal a million dollars, they’ll make you a president of Honduras,” told me a friend living on the island. While that might be true, at least in Honduras occasionally we make a chicken soup.
In 1827 a successful coup against president Dionisio de Herrera, Honduras’ first Chief of the State sent him to a prison in Guatemala for two years. He was freed two years later by a fellow Honduran freemason General Francisco Morazán.
Honduran presidents, typically, are sent to meet justice abroad, depriving the Honduran justice system of this privilege and burden.In 2009 President Mel Zelaya was not tied for breaking Honduran law, but placed on a plane and sent to Costa Rica.
The one way for a Honduran high official to end up in jail is by getting afoul of one of American agencies. In 2015 ex Honduran president Rafael Callejas was charged and eventually indicted by a US court on charges related to FIFA bribery scandal.Callejas is now in a US under house arrest and due to failing health could die in jail serving time.
While there is a general view that US legal system is far better than Honduran, there are several exceptions. One such exception is the impunity of murderous, treasonous actions of its top officials: Presidents, Vice presidents and speakers of the house.
American on the other hand live in a manipulated, artificial reality.
There were 45 US presidents and 48 vice presidents, and 116 speakers of the house and while we all know thatabundant power corrupts abundantly no sitting or ex US President have been indicted, let alone sat in jail. That is not because they didn’t commit crimes prior or during their presidencies, but it is because the system protects them. In fact, US have not been able to prosecute a single president or vice-president.
In 1807 Aaron Burr, a former US vice president to Thomas Jefferson, was arrested, tried and acquitted in Alabama charged with treason for conspiring to annex Spanish territory in Louisiana and Mexico into its own independent republic.
The only attempt that confirms the rule came in 1872 when President Ulysses S Grant was arrested for speeding. President Grant was a repeat offender and after he ignored warning repeatedly, he was finally placed in custody and his buggy was impounded. The police chief was unsure if they could charge a sitting President without impeachment, so Grant was released and after paying a fine walked to the White House.
Since then no President has even been arrested while in office. As one example President Richard Nixon, after a deep state instigated gingerly affair picked up by Washington Post, would likelihood end up in jail. This wasn’t necessary as his old vice-president turned President Gerald Ford granted him an unconditional pardon.
As a intersecting side note in 2017, Dennis Hastert, the longest ever serving Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives and serial child molester served 13 months in prison. Hastert was convicted of illegally structuring bank withdrawals to buy the silence of just one former student he sexually abused.
The US politicians are not groomed to their positions of influence because they avoided criminal behavior, but because they have. They are more useful and more predictable to handle with a dark past then if they were white as snow. In return for their faithfulness and silence, they are guaranteed protection.
