Former Honduras President Juan Orlando Hernandez has been found guilty of drug trafficking charges at a federal court in New York. How did we get here? Who is Juan Orlando Hernandez, and how did he get to power? As revealed by the results of his trial, it was thanks to the big drug cartels.

Known as JOH back home, Hernandez was the leader of the National Party and was even the president of the National Congress of Honduras before being elected as president in 2013 and then re-elected in 2017. He used to represent the Lempira Department of Honduras in the National Congress and became the congress president in that position.

As a presidential candidate, the staunch conservative politician campaigned against crime and vowed to fight drugs, which would be quite ironic given how he eventually ended up. He defeated Ricardo Alvarez in the primary election. His rival denounced the result as fraudulent, but soon enough, he became the nominee of the party before moving on to become president of Honduras. However, his 2013 win was marred by controversy.

As a candidate, Hernandez did not poll very highly as he was previously in 3rd place with only a projected 18% of the vote. However, the then-Congressman campaigned by claiming that his closest rival, Xiomara Castro, wanted to remove the Policía Militar. This was one of the reasons that he surged as he defeated Castro by 250,000 votes.

However, as the US Justice Department noted, Hernandez was taking bribes from some of the biggest drug traffickers in the world, including the infamous leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman. He then used that bribe money to bribe other officials to help him secure the presidency.

While Hernandez argued that he extradited drug traffickers to the US, the DOJ pointed out that he did so selectively. He also allegedly used the Honduran National Police and the Honduran Army "to protect and grow" the criminal organizations he was allied with.

READ MORE: Honduras: Trial of Ex-President Juan Orlando Hernandez Considered Must-See TV for Citizens

Juan Orlando Hernandez and His Relationship With the US as President of Honduras

In the beginning, the US was supportive of Hernandez because of his "tough on crime" persona as he campaigned against the drug syndicates. This is despite the DEA investigating him in 2013 over those alleged ties with the drug cartels.

When Hernandez's power grew in Honduras, however, the US noticed that as president, Hernandez "limited the ability of US law enforcement to act on the evidence it collected," according to Insight Crime. However, the US was letting him off the hook at that time, as he was helping the US stem migration.

However, things changed after his re-election as more and more allegations of his ties to the drug cartels came out, not to mention the election irregularities of his 2017 re-election win. Things then took a turn when his brother, Tony Hernandez, was arrested in Miami for bribery and drug trafficking.

Facebook Contributed to Juan Orlando Hernandez Misleading Honduras Citizens

Like many politicians, Juan Orlando Hernandez also used social media to his advantage. However, the right-wing leader was notable for using Facebook to spread disinformation. His posts also received hundreds of thousands of fake likes from more than a thousand inauthentic Facebook Pages. The thing is, Facebook knew about it and did nothing for nearly a year.

Facebook data scientist Sophie Zhang discovered the anomaly, according to The Guardian. She found that he received 90% of all the known fake engagements received by civic or political Pages in Honduras. This was supposed to violate Facebook's policy against "coordinated inauthentic behavior," but Facebook did little about those fake "likes." Zhang came out and revealed that the company was doing little about the Honduran situation, and it eventually forced the platform to act.

READ MORE: Honduras Ex-President Juan Orlando Hernandez Convicted on Drug Trafficking Charges in New York Trial

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Rick Martin

WATCH: How Juan Orlando Hernández Went From Honduras President to Shoving Drugs Up 'Noses of the Gringos' - NBC New York