Hondurasgate: Key Leaked Audio Files, Revealing U.S. Intervention in Honduras, Found Authentic "With Moderate Confidence"

Analysis by Earshot found that three leaked Hondurasgate audio files, revealing a complex plot by Washington to sideline leftist governments in Mexico and Colombia, are likely to be authentic.

Former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez speaks via video call during a press conference in Tegucigalpa on April 8, 2026. Photo by Orlando SIERRA / AFP via Getty Images.

President Donald Trump’s brazen intervention in November 2025 in the Honduran presidential election to openly call for a vote for the National Party’s Nasry Asfura came as a surprise to many both inside and outside Honduras. Given Trump’s emphasis on the need to combat so-called “narco-trafficking” groups in Latin America, his decision to simultaneously pardon former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted in March 2024 in a New York court of a series of drug-trafficking related charges, raised even more questions.

“I think that when [Hernández] was pardoned, a lot of people were wondering why he was pardoned and now we have the answer, which is that he had a role to play,” Stephanie Weatherbee Brito, secretary of the International People’s Assembly and an expert on Latin American politics, told Drop Site News.

Leaked audio files published by the Spanish outlet Diario Red, in collaboration with Honduran journalists who together launched a website called Hondurasgate, offer an explanation. Together, they purport to reveal a transnational conspiracy led by Hernández involving the United States, Honduras, Israel, and Argentina aimed at undermining and destabilizing leftist governments in Latin America.

The 37 leaked audio files include voice notes from messaging apps recorded by multiple speakers and two phone calls. The coordinated effort reportedly involves some of the most important political actors in Honduras, with the goal of returning Hernández to the presidency following his pardon, repositioning the country as a strategic ally for the U.S. and Israel in the region, and creating a media outlet with the express mission to undermine leftist governments in Mexico and Colombia.

The Hondurasgate story, as this scandal has come to be known, has been ignored or underreported by legacy U.S. media outlets. Mainstream reporters and analysts such as Council on Foreign Relations’s Will Freeman have questioned the authenticity of the story.

Drop Site News asked Earshot, an independent, sonic-investigation nonprofit, to conduct a voice analysis of three files—two recordings of Hernández and one of Asfura—and to determine whether they were AI-generated and whether they matched the claimed speakers. (The report can be found below.)

Diario Red and Hondurasgate previously reported to have conducted an analysis using Phonexia Voice Inspector, which they said had determined the recordings were not made with AI. That analysis did not identify the speakers. Diario Red and Hondurasgate did not reveal the source of the audio, but posted them in their original file formats.

Phonexia has also since distanced itself as a company from the verification of the files. Hondurasgate told Drop Site that the audio files were analyzed with the Phonexia Voice Inspector via a “standard, commercially available single-user and API access to their tools” while clarifying that there was not a formal partnership.

Hernández has denied it is his voice in the files, saying in a social media post that they are “clearly not [his] voice” and sharing a video comparing one of the leaked files to another recording of his voice.

According to the audio analysis by Earshot, however, the three files are “authentic recordings of Hernández and Asfura’s voices and are likely not AI generated.” However, given the audio quality, Earshot could not make a determination with certainty. “All three recordings are limited in quality due to the telephonic nature of the recordings,” according to Earshot’s report, commissioned by Drop Site. “Based on Earshot’s findings and on the limitations of the audio, Earshot’s conclusion is made with a moderate degree of confidence.”

Earshot explained that its audio authentication involved an analysis of “audio artifacts such as breaths, vocal hesitations, background noises, ambient room noise, and microphone distortion.” They also used a “machine learning voice comparison program called Resemblyzer to compare the voice of the alleged speakers Hernandez and Asfura with known recordings of the speakers.”

The Complex Plot to Return Hernández to Power

The audio files speak to a complex plot to return the discredited former Honduran president to power, expand controversial charter cities, build a new U.S. military base in the island of Roátan, and target leftist regional leaders with the support of Republicans in the U.S. via a coordinated media campaign.

In one recording, Hernández tells Asfura that he is sitting in the presidential chair thanks to him and Trump’s desire to see him return to power, confirming that Trump’s call for Hondurans to vote for Asfura was part of a larger strategy to secure a loyal ally in the Central American country.

A recent report on the 2025 election from the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a D.C.-based leftwing economic think tank that deployed a three-member delegation to the country for the vote, found that the “electoral process was also affected by overt foreign interference” and that the intervention by U.S. political figures “exerted undue pressure on the electorate and may have influenced voter behavior.” An investigation from the New York Times also determined that Trump’s interference likely swayed some voters.

In the second recording of Hernández, the former president tells sitting Vice-President María Antonieta Mejía that he has secured $350,000 from Argentinian President Javier Milei, who endorsed Asfura ahead of the vote, but needs a further $300,000 to set up a media outlet in the U.S. with the support of Republicans.

“And I need to have that liquidity because we’re going to set up an office here with the support of some Republicans to be able to attack and eradicate the cancer of the left there in Honduras and throughout Latin America,” says Hernández in the recording—adding that he also has “help” from an unnamed person in Mexico.

Antonieta tells him to leave out the details and says she will secure the money. A separate leaked audio file from Asfura suggests the money would come from diverted Honduran public funds. Drop Site did not independently verify that particular recording.

“The U.S. ruling class is interested in having exclusive access to both Latin American labor and Latin American raw material [and] progressive governments are an obstacle because all of them are seeking better terms of trade and more equitable relationships with the United States,” Weatherbee told Drop Site News.

Colombia, currently led by the leftist administration of Gustavo Petro, is also named as a potential target of the new media outlet in the leaked audio files.

This is only the latest example, Weatherbee says, of the U.S. strategy of hybrid warfare—that uses unconventional non-military methods such as the type of disinformation campaign described in the leaked audio. She pointed to recent lawfare campaigns in places such as Argentina, Ecuador, and Brazil—as well as the funding of opposition groups in Venezuela ahead of the military capture of leader Nicolás Maduro. The difference, she said, is that now countries like Colombia and Mexico, governed by left-wing governments who reject U.S. intervention, are now the targets.

The strategy is also driven, Weatherbee notes, by an interest in keeping out U.S. rivals such as China. Honduras is host to the U.S. Soto Cano airbase. In one of the audios analyzed by Earshot for Drop Site News, President Asfura of Honduras talks of opening another airbase on the island of Roátan, explicitly mentioning its proximity to Próspera, one of the controversial Zones for Employment and Economic Development (ZEDEs) in the country.

Asfura says in the leaked audio that, “The idea is also to buy all kinds of metals and other materials, specifically from Argentina and the United States, avoiding Canada and China, due to a warning we received. The Chinese were making offers, but we’re not going to give in; we’re going to put a stop to it.”

Trump’s 2025 National Security Strategy made explicit his government’s intention to pivot its attention back to the Western Hemisphere. The leaked audio files confirm that Trump is willing to employ a wide battery of strategies, including psychological operations carried out by compromised political actors, to reestablish its dominance over a region it considers to be in its sphere of influence.

Beyond their impact on Latin America, by leaning on a convicted drug trafficker to carry out his operation against the left in the region, the leaks also serve to expose Trump’s false claim to want to eradicate drug-trafficking groups.

“It demonstrates that an issue which is legitimate and very concerning to the American public, which is the opioid epidemic, is not actually a priority of this government. It’s not true that this government is taking measures to try to stem trafficking and to try to curb demand,” said Weatherbee.

Tania Arroyo, a Mexican geopolitical analyst covering Latin America, argues that Washington is seeking to destabilize multiple countries in the region because of their defense of sovereignty.

“[Sovereignty] is something the United States cannot allow at this moment because it prevents it from controlling strategic resources, from oil to strategic or critical minerals,” Arroyo told Drop Site News. “Washington is concentrating on achieving this control, no matter the cost.”

Earshot’s full report is available here:

Earshot Report Hondurasgate Audio Analysis And Authentication Of Three Recordings

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