Donald Trump indicated he regretted his decision to pardon a Democratic congressman, Henry Cuellar, after Cuellar’s announcement this past week that he would seek re-election.
Since his election in 2004, Cuellar has long been one of his party’s most conservative members. In May of 2024, he was indicted on charges of bribery and money laundering and accused of taking roughly $600,000 in total from two banks in Mexico and Azerbaijan.
Having been under investigation by the FBI for more than three years, Cuellar long maintained his innocence and was awaiting trial when Trump issued a pardon for him on Wednesday.
But now, the president seems to be having second thoughts after Cuellar said he planned to run for another term in 2026. That’s despite the primary challenges he’s faced from his own party in recent years.
Trump wrote on Truth Social early Sunday: “I signed the papers, and said to people in the Oval Office that I just did a very good, perhaps life saving, thing. God was very happy with me that day!”
He bizarrely insisted that Cuellar’s daughters would be angry with the congressman over his decision. Cuellar’s children do not have prominent public profiles and are not involved in their father’s work in Washington. He occasionally posts about them on social media.
Prior to posting about Cuellar’s pardon, Trump posted a letter he received from the congressman’s daughter regarding their father’s case.
“THEN IT HAPPENED!!! Only a short time after signing the Pardon, Congressman Henry Cuellar announced that he will be “running” for Congress again, in the Great State of Texas (a State where I received the highest number of votes ever recorded!), as a Democrat, continuing to work with the same Radical Left Scum that just weeks before wanted him and his wife to spend the rest of their lives in Prison - And probably still do!” Trump complained, bemoaning, “Such a lack of LOYALTY, something that Texas Voters, and Henry’s daughters, will not like.”
He added: “Oh’ [sic] well, next time, no more Mr. Nice guy!”
Cuellar responded during an interview on Sunday Morning Futures with Fox’s Maria Bartiromo.
“I was at church this morning with my wife. I prayed for the president, I prayed for his family, and I prayed for the presidency, because if the president succeeds, the country succeeds,” Cuellar said, confirming that he considers himself a conservative Democrat and would not switch parties next year.
“I follow the words of President [Lyndon B. Johnson], who said many years ago, ‘I’m an American, I’m a Texan, and I’m a Democrat, in that order,'” he continued. “And I think anybody that puts party before their country is doing a disservice to their country.”
The nature of Trump’s remark insinuates that the president aimed to convince Cuellar to abandon his party or his congressional seal in a show of gratitude for the pardon.
Instead, Cuellar filed for re-election the same day the pardon was granted.
The Democratic congressman hasn’t spoken publicly about the pardon process, but even under the pardon-happy second Trump administration, Americans who the president grants clemency must formally apply for it, per the Justice Department’s website.
Since taking office in January, Trump has exercised the pardon authority at a faster pace than most presidents. He has used the tool to directly benefit his own supporters, including but not limited to the hundreds of Americans charged for various crimes in response to the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
The president also used it to pardon others who lobbied his campaign and subsequent administration. Recently, the pardon authority was used to shield members of his 2020 campaign legal team, including Jenna Ellis, Rudy Giuliani, and Kenneth Chesebro, from lingering legal responsibility for the “fake electors” scheme.
Trump also turned many heads in Washington with the pardon of the former president of Honduras, convicted last year for drug trafficking, despite the Trump administration’s current aggressive actions against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean.
Cuellar is one of the Democrats’ frontline members, and his seat flipping for any reason would be a blow to his party in Texas and nationally.
Most analysts and, increasingly, many Republicans are warning that Democrats are on pace to retake the House in next year’s midterms. Cuellar switching parties or dropping out would endanger that goal.
But Republicans have sought to make these entreaties before, and Democratic leaders (with whom he still maintains good relationships) have helped Cuellar win tough races before — making the loyalty equation a more complicated question for the congressman.
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