President Trump used a Wednesday rally in San Antonio, along with a lengthy Truth Social post earlier that day, to publicly turn on Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, the Democratic congressman Trump pardoned last year after Cuellar and his wife faced bribery and money laundering charges.
Trump’s complaint: Cuellar never switched parties after being pardoned.
“In any event, I did the pardons, and made no deal, where a crooked politician would have, but 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.
Cuellar, who has represented his South Texas district since 2005, is running for re-election. His Republican opponent is Tano Tijerina.
“In any event, the man running against him, Tano Tijerina, is a STAR and, hopefully, will WIN! 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.”
Trump went on to praise Tijerina as “a legendary Baseball Star, Great Athlete, respected County Judge, and fine person,” and said he hoped Tijerina would beat Cuellar to show “how bad it is when you are recognized and humiliated as being one of the most disloyal political people on Earth.”
Trump also defended his decision not to extract a political commitment from Cuellar in exchange for the pardon. “I am very proud of the fact that I didn’t make a deal with Cuellar, which I easily could have, but relied on his character, which turned out to be a faulty one,” he wrote.
Tijerina responded on X: “Everyone in South Texas knows anything after Hello coming from Henry Cuellar is a lie. President Trump just confirmed that.”
Fox News Digital reported reaching out to Cuellar’s campaign for comment Thursday.
Trump’s pardon of Cuellar and his wife, Imelda, came last year amid what Trump has described as a politically motivated prosecution. In a previous Truth Social post, Trump alleged that then-President Joe Biden “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 dispute places a spotlight on the limits — and expectations — that can attach to a presidential pardon, even one granted without a stated quid pro quo.
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