Trump pardons Texas Democrat in foreign bribery case

WASHINGTON (CN) — President Donald Trump has granted a “full and unconditional” pardon to Texas Representative Henry Cuellar, he announced on social media Wednesday morning.

Trump claimed that the Biden administration targeted the Democratic lawmaker, who was indicted last year on charges of bribery and money laundering, because of his tough stance on immigration issues.

“For years the Biden Administration weaponized the Justice System against their Political Opponents, and anyone who disagreed with them,” the president said in a post on his social media platform Truth Social. “One of the clearest examples is when Crooked Joe used the FBI and DOJ to ‘take out’ a member of his own Party after Highly Respected Congressman Henry Cuellar bravely spoke out against Open Borders, and the Biden Border ‘Catastrophe.’”

The Justice Department last May issued an indictment against Cuellar, who represents Texas’ 28th Congressional District and has been a member of Congress since 2005. The agency accused the Democratic lawmaker of accepting as much as $600,000 in bribes from an oil company owned by the government of Azerbaijan and a bank headquartered in Mexico City.

Federal prosecutors said Cuellar — formerly co-chair of the Congressional Azerbaijan Conference — agreed to influence legislation related to Azerbaijan’s longtime conflict with Armenia and made statements in support of the country on the House floor. They claimed the lawmaker acted as an agent of the Azerbaijani government.

Prosecutors also accused the congressman of pushing to alter U.S. money laundering enforcement practices that threatened the business interests of the Mexican bank, which the Justice Department said had paid him off. They said Cuellar and his wife, Imelda, laundered the bribe cash through sham consulting contracts.

Still, Trump claimed the Justice Department had gone after the congressman and his wife “simply for speaking the TRUTH.”

“It is unAmerican and, as I previously stated, the Radical Left Democrats are a complete and total threat to Democracy!” the president wrote. “They will attack, rob, lie, cheat, destroy and decimate anyone who dares oppose their Far Left Agenda, an Agenda that, if left unchecked, will obliterate our magnificent Country.”

Though Cuellar is one of the most conservative Democrats in Congress, the move is a shocker for many Republicans hoping the indictment would help them flip his seat red next November. His trial was expected to begin early next year ahead of the 2026 midterms.

In a statement posted to social media on Wednesday, Cuellar thanked the president for his “tremendous leadership” and for “taking the time to look at the facts.”

“This pardon gives us a clean slate,” he wrote. “The noise is gone. The work remains. And I intend to meet it head on.”

Trump’s social media post included a letter from the lawmaker’s daughters in which they pleaded the White House for a pardon.

“This has been the hardest chapter of their lives,” Christina and Catherine Cuellar said of their parents in a Nov. 12 letter to the president. “Our father and mother are honest individuals, raised by hardworking parents who taught them that integrity matters above all.”

Cuellar’s daughters claimed that the congressman had sought “legal and ethical guidance” from the House Ethics Committee before any accusations were made by the Justice Department. And they suggested that their father’s “independence and honesty” contributed to his indictment.

“He has never been afraid to speak his mind, especially when it comes to protecting the people of South Texas and securing the border from the policies of the previous administration,” they told Trump.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries welcomed Cuellar’s pardon, calling it “exactly the right outcome.”

Speaking to reporters during a news conference, Jeffries refused to elaborate further on his position, saying his earlier statement spoke for itself and that he looked forward to speaking with Cuellar on the House floor.

But the top Democrat told CNN that he thought the case against his colleague would have been dropped even without a presidential pardon.

“The reality is that this indictment was very thin to begin with,” Jeffries said. “In my view, the charges were eventually going to be dismissed, if not at the trial court level, then by the Supreme Court, as they’ve repeatedly done in instances just like this.”

A federal court in January sentenced former New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez to 11 years in prison after he faced similar charges that he accepted bribes to act in the Senate on behalf of the government of Egypt. The former Democratic lawmaker is currently serving his sentence at a minimum-security federal prison in Pennsylvania.

Menendez also faced sharp criticism from his fellow lawmakers, including then-New Jersey Representative Andy Kim, who eventually took his spot in the Senate after the embattled senator chose to run for reelection as an independent.

But Democrats have long sought to set the charges against Cuellar apart from the conduct of his upper-chamber counterpart.

House Democratic Caucus chair Pete Aguilar told reporters following Cuellar’s indictment last year that the federal charges against Menendez included “some pictures and some things that were very different” to the accusations made against the Texas congressman. The indictment against Menendez included infamous images of gold bars and cash that prosecutors said the senator accepted as bribes.

Both Aguilar and Jeffries said at the time that they believed Cuellar was entitled to a presumption of innocence.

Following his 2024 indictment, the House Ethics Committee announced that it would investigate Cuellar over the charges that he accepted “bribes, gratuities or improper gifts” from a foreign government, as well as whether he misused his position for personal gain.

Cuellar stepped away from his role as ranking member of the House Appropriations subcommittee on homeland security after his indictment. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said at the time that the Texas Democrat was “entitled to his day in court.”

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