Trump says DOJ indicted Rep. Cuellar over border critiques of Biden: ‘Take him out!’
Former President Donald Trump claimed over the weekend that the Justice Department indicted Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar over his criticism of President Biden’s handling of the ongoing border crisis.
“Biden just Indicted Henry Cuellar because the Respected Democrat Congressman wouldn’t play Crooked Joe’s Open Border game,” Trump, 77, asserted on Truth Social Sunday night.
“He was for Border Control, so they said, ‘Let’s use the FBI and DOJ to take him out!’ This is the way they operate,” the former president claimed.
“They’re a bunch of D.C. Thugs, and at some point they will be paying a very big price for what they have done to our Country. CROOKED JOE BIDEN IS A THREAT TO DEMOCRACY!”
Trump has ramped up his criticisms of the migrant crisis under Biden, 81, as public polling shows illegal immigration is a top concern for American voters in the 2024 election.
Federal prosecutors indicted Cuellar (D-Texas) and his wife, Imelda, in Houston on Friday for allegedly accepting $600,000 in bribes between 2014 and 2021 from Socar, Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil and gas firm, and a Mexican bank.
The Democrat is accused of using his longstanding seat in Texas’ 28th Congressional District to influence US policy and push legislation favorable to the former Soviet republic, as well as lobby the executive branch for actions helpful to the unidentified bank headquartered in Mexico City.
At the same time, Imelda Cuellar allegedly laundered bribes for those actions with “sham consulting contracts, through a series of front companies and middlemen into shell companies … who performed little to no legitimate work under the contracts,” according to prosecutors.
The couple faces 204 years in prison each if convicted on all counts, though federal defendants are rarely sentenced to serve the maximum amount of time.
The Cuellars pleaded not guilty to all charges and posted $100,000 bonds to be released after their initial court appearance on Friday.
Republicans and Democrats have since called on the congressman to resign — including former Democratic presidential candidate Rep. Dean Phillips.
“While the bar for Federal indictment is high, trust in government is at an all-time low,” Phillips (D-Minn.) told Axios. “That’s why I believe any elected official or candidate facing such charges should resign or end their campaign.”
But House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) has stood by Cuellar, saying he “is entitled to his day in court and the presumption of innocence throughout the legal process” but will “take leave as Ranking Member of the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee while this matter is ongoing.”
Cuellar, a member of the moderate Blue Dog Coalition and the lone pro-life Democrat in Congress, has broken ranks with his colleagues to speak out about the Biden administration’s “catch and release” policies having enabled the US border crisis.
Trump has launched similar attacks against federal, state and local prosecutors who brought 88 criminal charges against him in the past year for alleged election interference in 2016 and 2020, as well as improperly retaining national security documents after leaving the White House.
“Virtually every great legal scholar says the Crooked New York City D.A., Alvin Bragg, who is allowing violent crime to run rampant on the sidewalks of New York, has absolutely NO CASE AGAINST ME. ELECTION INTERFERENCE!!!” the former president railed on Truth Social Saturday.
Bragg’s indictment is the first of four cases against Trump to reach trial after the Manhattan prosecutor slapped him with 34 counts of fraudulently concealing payments reimbursing his former legal fixer, Michael Cohen, for burying stories about Trump’s alleged affairs with porn star Stormy Daniels and ex-Playboy model Karen McDougal during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) and his wife were indicted this past September on corruption charges similar to the Cuellars that involved influencing US policy toward Egypt and Qatar.
Trump told the Daily Caller last year that the Menendez indictment was “an attack … because he wasn’t getting along too well with the Democrats and with Biden” and said the Garden State Democrat went through “a tough, tough situation” during an earlier corruption case that ended in a mistrial in 2017, according to Politico.
