WASHINGTON (CN) — House Democrats on Tuesday acknowledged the gravity of the recent indictment of Texas Representative Henry Cuellar — but stopped short of putting him in the same box as other lawmakers facing federal scrutiny.
“This is an incredibly serious issue,” California Representative Pete Aguilar told reporters during a news conference on Capitol Hill. “It’s not lost on House Democrats how serious this is.”
But the House Democratic Caucus chair also said that Cuellar, who represents Texas’s 28th Congressional District, was entitled to the presumption of innocence and that the legal process should be allowed to play out.
“That’s the overwhelming feeling of House Democrats,” Aguilar said.
Cuellar was charged Friday with bribery and money laundering by the Justice Department in a wide-ranging indictment which said that the lawmaker accepted roughly $600,000 in bribes from an Azerbaijani oil company and a bank headquartered in Mexico City.
In exchange, the DOJ contends in the indictment, Cuellar agreed to influence policy towards Azerbaijan and oppose U.S. money laundering enforcement practices that threatened the Mexican bank.
The Texas Democrat is now the third lawmaker in recent months to be caught up in legal troubles. New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez is facing similar charges from the Justice Department, which has accused the Democrat of wielding his political influence to benefit government interests in Egypt and Qatar.
New York Representative George Santos was expelled from Congress late last year after the Justice Department slapped him with 23 federal charges including money laundering and identity theft. Democrats at the time urged Santos, a Republican, to step down.
Aguilar, though, sought Tuesday to distance Cuellar’s indictment from other federal charges against lawmakers, pointing out that while the accusations were serious Democrats viewed their Texas colleague as a “serious public official.”
“Representative Cuellar has been for decades a legislator in Texas,” he argued. “He has deep relationships with Republican colleagues and Democratic colleagues on both sides of the aisle. I think that’s what sets this apart from the other issues and the silliness of George Santos that we had in the past.”
Aguilar also contended that the substance of the charges against Cuellar were different from other indicted lawmakers, particularly with respect to Senator Menendez.
“There were some pictures and some things that were very different with respect to the allegations [against Menendez],” he said, adding that he felt all three individuals in question — Santos, Menendez and now Cuellar — were entitled to the presumption of innocence.
The Justice Department indictment against Menendez included several images of the bribes the lawmaker purportedly accepted from Egyptian and Qatari proxies, including a Mercedes-Benz luxury convertible, gold bars and cash hidden inside a Senate fleece jacket.
While the Friday indictment against Cuellar didn’t include photo evidence, the Justice Department reprinted strings of text messages between the Texas Democrat and an Azerbaijani diplomat, including conversations about his work advocating for Azerbaijan amid its 2020 conflict with Armenia.
Aguilar did not expand on what he saw as the differences between the charges against Menendez and those against Cuellar.
Following Friday’s charges, Democratic leadership was quick to cite Cuellar’s record as a public servant. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries wrote in a statement that the Texas lawmaker is “entitled to his day in court” and joined colleagues in urging the presumption of innocence.
“Henry Cuellar has admirably devoted his career to public service and is a valued member of the House Democratic Caucus,” Jeffries wrote.
Cuellar, for his part, has maintained that he and his wife, Imelda — also implicated in the indictment — are innocent of the charges levied against them.
“Everything I have done in Congress has been to serve the people of South Texas,” he wrote in a statement Friday, contending that he had proactively sought legal advice from the House Ethics Committee and a national law firm about his activities.
“The actions I took in Congress were consistent with the actions of many of my colleagues and in the interest of the American people,” Cuellar said.
The Texas representative has stepped down from his positions as House Democrats’ deputy whip and as ranking member of the House Committee on Appropriations’ homeland security subpanel while the investigation is ongoing.
Cuellar was reelected to his seat in 2022, narrowly defeating a primary challenge from progressive rival Jessica Cisneros despite an FBI raid on his Laredo, Texas, home earlier that year. Following his indictment, the lawmaker said he will still seek another term in office.
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