By Gabby Birenbaum, The Texas Tribune
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump announced he will pardon U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, and his wife, ending the congressman's multi-year federal legal battle. Cuellar had faced a dozen charges of bribery, money laundering and conspiracy.
In Trump’s 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’s border policy.
“Sleepy Joe went after the Congressman, and even the Congressman’s wonderful wife, Imelda, simply for speaking the TRUTH,” Trump wrote.
Cuellar also on Wednesday filed for reelection as a Democrat, quieting speculation that he planned to switch parties. On the House floor Wednesday afternoon, numerous Democratic colleagues greeted Cuellar warmly, hugging him and shaking his hand.
Cuellar’s legal controversy began in 2022, during the Biden administration, when the FBI raided 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’s alleged acceptance of nearly $600,000 in bribes from the Central Asian country 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.
Cuellar’s trial was set to begin in September, but a federal judge had moved the date to April — 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.
The case had already ensnared two of Cuellar’s political advisers, who pled guilty to conspiring with Cuellar to launder over $200,000 in bribes from a Mexican bank.
With Trump’s pardon, Cuellar will no longer face any legal ramifications related to the bribery case.
“I want to thank President Trump for his tremendous leadership and for taking the time to look at the facts,” Cuellar said in a statement on X. “I 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.
“This pardon gives us a clean slate,” he continued. “The 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.”
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’s prison sentence for wire fraud and identity theft.
Trump said the pardon would also apply to Imelda Cuellar. In his post, the president attached a Nov. 12 letter to him from Cuellar’s daughters requesting clemency for their parents and suggesting that their dad’s "independence and honesty” on border policy “may have contributed to how this case began.”
“President Trump, you once publicly said that you believed the indictment was wrong — and later, at a White House picnic, you told me personally, as you pointed to my father, that he was a ‘good man’,” Catherine and Christina Cuellar wrote in their letter. “Those words meant more than you could ever know.”
Trump echoed the Cuellar daughters’ belief about Cuellar’s border stance in his post.
“For years, the Biden Administration weaponized the Justice System against their Political Opponents, and anyone who disagreed with them,” Trump wrote. “One of the clearest examples of this was 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 longtime Laredo congressman, an institution in South Texas who has survived significant electoral challenges in both primaries and general elections, is one of Republicans’ 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.
This cycle, he is facing a serious Republican opponent — Webb County Judge Tano Tijerina, a former Democrat, who announced his candidacy Tuesday and noted that Cuellar was facing “serious federal corruption accusations that have shaken the trust of the people he is supposed to serve,” in a statement announcing his candidacy.
On Wednesday, Tijerina said his campaign was never contingent on Cuellar’s legal troubles.
“I did not launch my campaign because Congressman Cuellar was in trouble, I am running because South Texas is in trouble,” Tijerina said in a statement. “Henry stopped fighting for South Texas years ago, instead working for his DC bosses and their special interests. That isn’t South Texas values.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told CNN he agreed with the president's pardon, even if he didn't understand his motivation.
"The reality is this indictment was very thin to begin with," Jeffries said. "I don't know why the president decided to do this. I think the outcome was exactly the right outcome."
Jeffries will be a special guest at an upcoming virtual fundraiser Cuellar is hosting, according to a source familiar with the event.
Both Speaker Mike Johnson and National Republican Congressional Committee Chair Richard Hudson told Axios they did not know that Trump planned to pardon Cuellar. But Johnson told a group of reporters that he did not think it would make Republicans' effort to hold the House majority in 2026 more difficult.
"No, that has no effect on us at all," Johnson said. "That's a very competitive district, and we'll have a strong candidate in that district, and we'll win, because we have a great record to run on."
Republicans in Texas and in Washington have routinely brought up Cuellar’s legal woes in their campaign against him. But in pardoning Cuellar, Trump — who called Cuellar "beloved" in his post — has neutered one of Republicans’ best arguments.
“Henry, I don’t know you, but you can sleep well tonight — your nightmare is finally over!” Trump wrote.
This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.