Newly-pardoned U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX) received a tongue-lashing from President Donald Trump on social media this week as the president threw his support behind the congressman’s GOP opponent.
The move by Trump, who announced the news in a Truth Social post on Tuesday, comes after the president last month pardoned the lawmaker, who had been under indictment for allegations of bribery and acting as a foreign agent by the U.S. Department of Justice under President Joe Biden.
“[T]he fact that Henry Cuellar would be running against Donald J. Trump, and the Republican Party, seems to be a great act of disloyalty and, perhaps more importantly, the act of a fool who would immediately go back to a Political Party, the Radical Left Democrats, whose views are different from his, but not nearly good or strong enough to be a true Republican,” Trump wrote.
In Trump’s pardoning of Cuellar, which was announced the same day as Texas’ candidate filing deadline in December, the president asserted that the congressman had been mistreated by the Biden administration, likening it to his own past political prosecutions.
Hours after the pardon, Cuellar filed for re-election as a Democrat.
Not just telegraphing the expectations he had for issuing the pardon, but stating them explicitly, Trump added in another post: “I gave [Cuellar] and Mrs. Cuellar a full and unconditional Pardon. In doing so, I never assumed he would be running for Office again, and certainly not as a Democrat…”
Cuellar responded by referencing his listing as one of the most bipartisan members in D.C.
“Congress only works when it works in a bipartisan way,” Cuellar wrote. “That approach has guided me throughout my time in Congress — making friends, building trust, and improving outcomes — because it works. No ifs, ands, or buts about it.”
Being a moderate Democrat, and one located along the southern border, Cuellar has often tried to tow the line between the two parties — particularly on the issue of border security — and has been at odds with both camps while doing so.
Cuellar, for example, pressed the Biden administration for further action on securing the border when the region was posting record numbers of apprehensions of illegal aliens who crossed into the U.S.
He has also flirted with switching parties before, including before the 2024 election, which he narrowly won re-election by 13,000 votes.
Cuellar’s district was targeted by the GOP-dominated legislature during last summer’s redistricting effort, shifting it to a district that voted for Trump by 10 percentage points in 2024. But, based on the average of statewide races over the past two election cycles, the district is slightly more friendly to Democrats than it was before the redistricting effort, shifting from D-51% to D-53%, per The Texan’s Texas Partisan Index.
