Trump endorses Republican challenger against pardoned Rep Henry Cuellar
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President Donald Trump on Tuesday endorsed his Republican rival, Tano Tijerina, against Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, just weeks after pardoning the longtime Democrat in a corruption case that Trump said stemmed from Biden-era political retaliation.
Trump pardoned Cuellar in December after the Justice Department under the Biden administration indicted Cuellar and his wife for allegedly accepting nearly $600,000 in bribes from an Azerbaijani energy company and a Mexican bank.
“No one knows Henry Cuellar better than Donald J. Trump,” Trump wrote in a heated Truth Social post on Tuesday afternoon. “I reviewed his records, learned about his finances, and listened to his two wonderful daughters beg me to help their beloved mother and father.”
Trump called Cuellar’s daughters’ letters “heartbreaking and beautiful” and stated that only he could “solve” their father’s “problems.”
EV DEMI, WHO WAS FORGIVEN BY TRUMP, REVEALED THAT HE WILL CHANGE POLITICAL PARTIES
President Donald Trump announced on Truth Social in December that he was pardoning Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas. (Nathan Howard/Politico/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
“He and his wife were sentenced to up to 20 years in prison for being ‘stupid’ at what he did, but most of all, for the Biden Administration using Political Weaponization on Cuellar and his wife because they disagreed with his policies on the Southern Border,” Trump said. he wrote. “He was a weak and incompetent version of me, the one who wanted the Border closed to criminals, drug dealers, people in mental institutions, and most of all, the murderers and hard-boiled criminals sitting in prisons and mental institutions, and who should never have been given the right to release our Country.”
The president added that Cuellar’s views were not “strong” but claimed Democrats were retaliating against him with a view to giving him a life sentence.
“As an expert on Political Weaponization, based on what the Biden Losers did to me, without ever having met Henry Cuellar, and especially because of the awesomeness of the letter from their daughter asking me to help ‘Mom and Dad,’ I gave him and Mrs. Cuellar a full and unconditional pardon,” Trump wrote. “When I was doing this, I never thought he would run again and certainly not as a Democrat.”
Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, was accused of accepting more than half a million dollars in bribes from an Azerbaijani energy company and a Mexican bank. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc. via Getty Images)
WATCH: DEM MP THANKS TRUMP FOR FORGIVENESS, SAYS HE WAS SURPRISE AFTER RE-ELECTION BID
Trump said “even though he did” [Cuellar] “by far the greatest good of his life, 20 years of FREEDOM,” he will support Tijerina for Congress because Cuellar’s views are “not nearly as good or strong.”
The Justice Department has previously said Cuellar’s alleged bribe payments were laundered through a series of shell companies and intermediaries to shell companies owned by his wife, Imelda, who “did little or no legitimate work under the contracts.”
Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, and his wife face up to 20 years in prison for the alleged crimes, President Donald Trump said. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc. via Getty Images)
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In response, the Justice Department said Cuellar allegedly agreed to use his office to influence U.S. foreign policy in favor of Azerbaijan.
Drafted by the Milwaukee Brewers in 1993, Tijerina served three terms as a Webb County judge after retiring from baseball.
