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| Henry Cuellar thanks Trump for the pardon but..... |
President Donald J. Trump has abused the powers of the presidency. He has pardoned so many criminals. Had a Democratic president done it, Trump and Republicans would go bezerk over it. Trust me, the status quo also runs on the hypocrisy.
The conservative Democrat from South Texas, Henry Cuellar was pardoned by the president this month. Cuellar and his wife were indicted on corruption and bribery.
In early May 2024, Cuellar was indicted on money laundering, bribery and conspiracy charges by a federal grand jury in Houston, Texas; he was alleged to have accepted nearly $600,000 from Azerbaijan and a Mexican commercial bank in order to influence U.S. policy.
His criminal trial had been scheduled to start in April 2026. With the pardon, the federal courts are stalled.
Trump secretly coordinated with Cuellar to switch parties.
With Texas being granted their temporary congressional district map, Republicans are eyeing Cuellar for top defeat. His district which stretches from Brownsville to the suburbs of San Antonio has now been isolated from Corpus Christi to Brownsville.
That places his district as +2 Republican.
Cuellar is on the fence. He may either run as a Democrat or retire. Becoming an independent or Republican isn't on the radar.
Trump blasted Cuellar for “Such a lack of LOYALTY,” suggesting the Republican president might have expected the clemency to bolster the GOP’s narrow House majority heading into the 2026 midterm elections.
Cuellar, in a television interview Sunday after Trump’s social media post, said he was a conservative Democrat willing to work with the administration “to see where we can find common ground.” The congressman said he had prayed for the president and the presidency at church that morning “because if the president succeeds, the country succeeds.”
Citing a fellow Texas politician, the late President Lyndon Johnson, Cuellar said he was an American, Texan and Democrat, in that order. “I think anybody that puts party before their country is doing a disservice to their country,” he told Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”
Trump noted on his Truth Social platform that the Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration had brought the charges against Cuellar and that the congressman, by running once more as a Democrat, was continuing to work with “the same RADICAL LEFT” that wanted him and his wife in prison — “And probably still do!”
“Such a lack of LOYALTY, something that Texas Voters, and Henry’s daughters, will not like. Oh’ well, next time, no more Mr. Nice guy!” Trump said. Cuellar’s two daughters, Christina and Catherine, had sent Trump a letter in November asking that he pardon their parents.
Trump explained his pardon he announced Wednesday as a matter of stopping a “weaponized” prosecution. Cuellar was an outspoken critic of Biden’s immigration policy, a position that Trump saw as a key alignment with the lawmaker.
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Cuellar said he has good relationships within his party. “I think the general Democrat Caucus and I, we get along. But they know that I’m an independent voice,” he said.
A party switch would have been an unexpected bonus for Republicans after the GOP-run Legislature redrew the state’s congressional districts this year at Trump’s behest. The Texas maneuver started a mid-decade gerrymandering scramble playing out across multiple states. Trump is trying to defend Republicans’ House majority and avoid a repeat of his first term, when Democrats dominated the House midterms and used a new majority to stymie the administration, launch investigations and twice impeach Trump.
Yet Cuellar’s South Texas district, which includes parts of metro San Antonio, was not one of the Democratic districts that Republicans changed substantially, and Cuellar believes he remains well-positioned to win reelection.
Federal authorities had charged Cuellar and his wife with accepting thousands of dollars in exchange for the congressman advancing the interests of an Azerbaijan-controlled energy company and a bank in Mexico. Cuellar was accused of agreeing to influence legislation favorable to Azerbaijan and deliver a pro-Azerbaijan speech on the floor of the U.S. House.
Cuellar has said he his wife were innocent. The couple’s trial had been set to begin in April.
In the Fox interview,, Cuellar insisted that federal authorities tried to entrap him with “a sting operation to try to bribe me, and that failed.”
Cuellar still faces a House Ethics Committee investigation.
Recent party switches.
Jeff Van Drew was elected as a Democrat House member from New Jersey. When Trump was impeached the first time, Van Drew was one of three Democrats to oppose the impeachment. He switched parties in 2019 and has been a Republican ever since.
Justin Amash was elected as a Republican House member from Michigan. When he voted to impeach Trump in 2019, he was targeted for primary defeat.
Kyrsten Sinema was elected as a Democrat in Arizona in 2018. In 2022, she became an independent. She originally started as a Green Party candidate. When she ran for the House she was a center left Democrat. In her senate term she ran as a center right Democrat. She retired in 2024 after facing a primary challenge from future senator Ruben Gallego.
Joe Manchin was elected as a Democrat in 2010 in a West Virginia's special election. He won comfortably in Republican stronghold. In 2024, Manchin decided he was retiring and also became an independent during that decision. Manchin stalled a lot of Presidents Barack Obama, Donald J. Trump and Joe Biden's policies. He faced backlash when he and Sinema opposed raising the minimum wage, extending child tax credits, expanding the Build Back Better law, adding more regulations to the Inflation Reduction Act law and ending cloture (i.e. the filibuster).
Bob Menendez was elected as a Democrat in a special election in 2006. He convicted in a political corruption case in 2024, making him the first sitting member of Congress convicted of conspiracy to act as a foreign agent. He is expected to be pardoned by Trump this month. Menendez became an independent in 2024.
Eric Adams, outgoing mayor of New York City, former governor Andrew Cuomo and Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman are independent. They were elected as Democrats.
During the presidency of Joe Biden, there were five independents who caucus with the Democrats in the Senate.
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