{"id":74732,"date":"2025-12-03T19:33:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T19:33:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/74732\/"},"modified":"2025-12-03T19:33:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T19:33:08","slug":"donald-trump-pardons-texas-democrat-henry-cuellar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/74732\/","title":{"rendered":"Donald Trump pardons Texas Democrat Henry Cuellar"},"content":{"rendered":"

Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. See our AI policy<\/a>, and give us feedback<\/a>.<\/p>\n

WASHINGTON \u2014 President Donald Trump announced he will pardon U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, and his wife, ending the congressman\u2019s multi-year federal legal battle. Cuellar had faced a dozen charges of bribery, money laundering and conspiracy.<\/p>\n

In Trump\u2019s pardon, shared Wednesday morning via Truth Social, the president said that the Democratic congressman had been punished by a weaponized Department of Justice under former president Joe Biden for speaking out against the administration\u2019s border policy.<\/p>\n

\u201cSleepy Joe went after the Congressman, and even the Congressman\u2019s wonderful wife, Imelda, simply for speaking the TRUTH,\u201d Trump wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cuellar also on Wednesday filed for reelection as a Democrat, quieting speculation that he planned to switch parties. <\/p>\n

Cuellar\u2019s legal controversy began in 2022, during the Biden administration, when the FBI raided<\/a> his home and office as part of a federal probe investigating the diplomatic practices of Azerbaijan. Cuellar and his wife were indicted by the Department of Justice in 2024 on 12 counts of bribery, conspiracy and money laundering centering the congressman\u2019s alleged acceptance of nearly $600,000 in bribes from the Central Asian county and a Mexican commercial bank. The indictment alleged that the money was laundered through shell companies owned by Imelda Cuellar, and that the congressman subsequently pushed policy benefitting Azerbaijani interests.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cuellar\u2019s trial was set to begin in September, but a federal judge had moved the date to April \u2014 after the March primary but before what is set to be a competitive general election. Throughout his legal ordeal, he has maintained that he is innocent.<\/p>\n

The case had already ensnared two of Cuellar\u2019s political advisers, who pled guilty<\/a> to conspiring with Cuellar to launder over $200,000 in bribes from a Mexican bank.<\/p>\n

With Trump\u2019s pardon, Cuellar will no longer face any legal ramifications related to the bribery case.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to thank President Trump for his tremendous leadership and for taking the time to look at the facts,\u201d Cuellar said<\/a> in a statement on X. \u201cI thank God for standing with my family and I during this difficult time. This decision clears the air and lets us move forward for South Texas.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis pardon gives us a clean slate,\u201d he continued. \u201cThe noise is gone. The work remains. And I intend to meet it head on. Thank you Mr. President, God bless you, and God bless the United States of America.\u201d<\/p>\n

The president, who himself faced numerous indictments after his first term, has pursued a spree of pardons and commutations since taking office again in January. He has issued over 1,500 pardons to Jan. 6 defendants, white collar criminals, associates and now, a sitting Democratic congressman. In October, he commuted GOP Rep. George Santos\u2019s prison sentence for wire fraud and identity theft.<\/p>\n

Trump said the pardon would also apply to Imelda Cuellar. In his post, the president attached a Nov. 12 letter<\/a> to him from Cuellar\u2019s daughters requesting clemency for their parents and suggesting that their dad\u2019s \u201cindependence and honesty\u201d on border policy \u201cmay have contributed to how this case began.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPresident Trump, you once publicly said that you believed the indictment was wrong \u2014 and later, at a White House picnic, you told me personally, as you pointed to my father, that he was a \u2018good man\u2019,\u201d Catherine and Christina Cuellar wrote in their letter. \u201cThose words meant more than you could ever know.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump echoed the Cuellar daughters\u2019 belief about Cuellar\u2019s border stance in his post.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor years, the Biden Administration weaponized the Justice System against their Political Opponents, and anyone who disagreed with them,\u201d Trump wrote. \u201cOne of the clearest examples of this was when Crooked Joe used the FBI and DOJ to \u2018take out\u2019 a member of his own Party after Highly Respected Congressman Henry Cuellar bravely spoke out against Open Borders, and the Biden Border \u2018Catastrophe.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The longtime Laredo congressman, an institution in South Texas who has survived significant electoral challenges in both primaries and general elections, is one of Republicans\u2019 top targets in 2026. Cuellar was already representing a seat that Trump had won by 7 percentage points; Texas Republicans aimed to make his reelection more difficult by redrawing his district to have favored Trump by 10 percentage points. One of the most moderate Democrats in the House and the only federally elected anti-abortion Democrat left in the party, Cuellar had survived every electoral challenge he had faced, including last cycle, as South Texas voters shifted right and his indictment was made public.<\/p>\n

This cycle, he is facing a serious Republican opponent<\/a> \u2014 Webb County Judge Tano Tijerina, a former Democrat, who announced his candidacy Tuesday and noted that Cuellar was facing \u201cserious federal corruption accusations that have shaken the trust of the people he is supposed to serve,\u201d in a statement announcing his candidacy.<\/p>\n

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told CNN he agreed with the president\u2019s pardon, even if he didn\u2019t understand his motivation. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe reality is this indictment was very thin to begin with,\u201d Jeffries said. \u201cI don\u2019t know why the president decided to do this. I think the outcome was exactly the right outcome.\u201d <\/p>\n

Republicans in Texas and in Washington have routinely brought up Cuellar\u2019s legal woes in their campaign against him. But in pardoning Cuellar, Trump has neutered one of Republicans\u2019 best arguments.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHenry, I don\u2019t know you, but you can sleep well tonight \u2014 your nightmare is finally over!\u201d Trump wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. See our AI policy, and give…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74733,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[155,157,156,15660],"class_list":{"0":"post-74732","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-corpus-christi","8":"tag-corpus-christi","9":"tag-corpus-christi-headlines","10":"tag-corpus-christi-news","11":"tag-henry-cuellar"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74732\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}