Raging Trump Admits Real Reason He Pardoned Dem Rep
The president admitted that he expected something in return when he pardoned a lawmaker facing federal bribery charges.
Donald Trump has raged at a Democratic congressman for not switching parties after the president pardoned him and his wife over federal bribery charges.
The public outburst began on Truth Social and spilled into his free-wheeling campaign speech in San Antonio, Texas, where the president erupted over the state’s Rep. Henry Cuellar’s refusal to flip to the Republican Party.
The drama stems back to 2024, when Cuellar, a moderate Democrat, and his wife, Imelda Cuellar, were hit with a sweeping federal bribery and conspiracy indictment.
Prosecutors alleged Cueller and his wife accepted nearly $600,000 in bribes from an Azerbaijani state oil company.
Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
Prosecutors alleged the couple accepted nearly $600,000 in bribes from an Azerbaijani state oil company and a Mexican financial institution in exchange for using Cuellar’s congressional office to influence U.S. foreign policy decisions.
Trump, 80, issued a full pardon to the lawmaker in December, claiming at the time that the Department of Justice under the Biden administration had weaponized the legal system against Cuellar because he was critical of Democratic immigration policies.
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However, ahead of the rally in San Antonio on Wednesday, Trump revealed his actual motivation was far less noble and far more transactional. In a lengthy social media post, Trump called Cuellar a “LOSER” and openly complained that the lawmaker remained a Democrat despite the get-out-of-jail-free card.
“To the people of Texas, I am headed your way, and one of the people that I am going to pay respect to today is Tano Tijerina,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, endorsing Cuellar’s Republican opponent.
“Out of love and passion, he is running against a Dumocrat, Henry Cuellar, who, along with his wife, I pardoned, at the request of his daughters, because they said, ‘Please don’t let them take our parents away!’ They would have gone to jail on federal fraud and conspiracy charges, for over 20 years and, in fact, Henry Cuellar’s brother, a Sheriff, a short time later, was indicted on the same charges.”
Trump insisted he “made no deal,” but freely admitted he banked on a political payback that never materialized.
“I thought there would be a good chance that Cuellar, who was persecuted by Democrats because they didn’t like him, would have routinely gone over to the Republican Party — The people that saved him from years in prison,” Trump wrote.
“Shockingly, Cuellar announced, only a few days later, that he is going to remain a Dumocrat. Many considered this to be a tremendous act of disloyalty, and certainly, showed him to be an extremely ungrateful person.”
The president went on to brand the GOP challenger’s campaign as official revenge: “We call that payback for a disloyal and ungrateful person, a person whose life has been saved only to go back into the clutches of the people that tried so hard to destroy him. Henry Cuellar is a LOSER who, right now, should be serving a longterm jail sentence with his wife in a top level penitentiary.”
Later that evening, while speaking at a San Antonio rally for Attorney General Ken Paxton, Trump doubled down in front of supporters, making it explicitly clear that he expected political compensation for his executive clemency.
“I like to talk about loyalty. To me, I think loyalty... Now, I don’t know him. I don’t know if I ever met him,” Trump told the crowd. “I thought it was rather incredible. I guess I expected maybe he wouldn’t run, or maybe he’d run maybe as a Republican.”
Trump lamented that he “relied on his character, which turned out to be a faulty one,” before openly complaining that Cuellar’s daughters failed to pressure their father into switching parties.
Throughout the indictment, Cuellar consistently denied all wrongdoing, insisting the federal case was a politically motivated hit job over his immigration stances.
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