Donald Trump is angry that indicted former Rep. Henry Cuellar is running again as a Democrat rather than switch parties after the president pardoned the Texas congressman and his wife in a federal bribery and conspiracy case.
Trump blasted Cuellar for “Such a lack of LOYALTY,” suggesting the president might have expected the clemency to persuade the lifelong Democrat to run as a Republican to potentially 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 Biden 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 what he called 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.
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 despite the crimes he was accused of committing.
Federal authorities had charged Cuellar and his wife with accepting hundreds of 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 and his wife were innocent. The couple’s trial had been set to begin in April.
In the Fox interview, Cuellar said 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.
Barrow writes for the Associated Press.
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