President Donald Trump on Monday granted a full and unconditional pardon to Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, who had been facing federal charges in a bribery and conspiracy case, saying on his Truth Social platform that the justice system had been “weaponised” by his predecessor.
“I am hereby announcing my full and unconditional PARDON of beloved Texas Congressman Henry Cuellar … I don’t know you, but you can sleep well tonight – Your nightmare is finally over!” Trump wrote.
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The move ends a high-profile prosecution in which federal prosecutors alleged Cuellar and his wife accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from an oil and gas company that was partly owned by the government of Azerbaijan. The couple had pleaded not guilty and were scheduled for trial in April on charges that included conspiracy and bribery.
Trump, who did not offer evidence for the charge, accused the Biden administration of using the Justice Department to target political opponents and noted Cuellar’s criticism of what the president called “Open Borders and the Biden Border ‘Catastrophe’.” The president has frequently framed his own legal entanglements as politically motivated “witch hunts.”
The pardon is part of a string of high-profile interventions by Trump since he returned to the White House for a second term. On Monday, Trump issued a surprise pardon that freed former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández from a West Virginia prison where Hernández was serving a sentence tied to narcotics and weapons convictions that carried more than four decades behind bars. In February, Trump pardoned former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich in a long-running political corruption case.
Legal experts say a presidential pardon forgives federal offenses and prevents further federal prosecution for the pardoned acts, but it is not an adjudication of innocence and does not erase the historical record of indictment or conviction. The scope of a pardon can vary, and it does not apply to state charges or civil consequences unrelated to federal criminal liability.
Cuellar, first elected to Congress in 2004, has been one of the more conservative Democrats in the House and has often broken with his party on immigration and energy issues. He faces potential political fallout from the case and its resolution; his office and allies have consistently denied wrongdoing.
The pardon is likely to intensify debate over the use of presidential clemency, the politicization of justice and the broader implications of last-resort executive powers in a polarized Washington where accusations of selective enforcement have become a recurring theme.
By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
