House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) praised President Donald Trump on Wednesday for pursuing “the right outcome” in pardoning Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX).
Cuellar and his wife are facing federal charges of bribery, money laundering, and acting as foreign agents for the Azerbaijani government and a Mexican bank. While the federal indictment was issued in 2024 during the Biden administration, Cuellar’s trial was pushed back to this year and then delayed again until 2026, when a judge ruled to drop the charges of acting as foreign agents.
Now, Cuellar is entering the final year of his term without any trial. Currently, House Democrats hold 213 seats, while Republicans hold 218. Jeffries suggested that Cuellar will be “moving forward” to continue representing his Texas district.
“I don’t know why the president decided to do this. I think the outcome was exactly the right outcome,” Jeffries said on CNN’s The Situation Room on Wednesday.
“Congressman Cuellar is a beloved member of the House of Representatives, loved in his community, particularly in Laredo. I’ve had the opportunity to spend time with him down in Laredo in South Texas,” Jeffries added.
“I look forward to that moving forward,” he continued. “Listen, the reality is this indictment was very thin to begin with, in my view. The charges were eventually going to be dismissed, if not at the trial court level then by the Supreme Court, as they’ve repeatedly done in instances just like this.”
Trump had long condemned the indictment of Cuellar, accusing former President Joe Biden of being “a threat to democracy” for the charges.
“Biden just Indicted Henry Cuellar because the Respected Democrat Congressman wouldn’t play Crooked Joe’s Open Border game. 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,” Trump wrote on Truth Social at the time.
Cuellar thanked Trump for the “clean slate,” but did not confirm or deny whether he will run for reelection in 2026. Jeffries also did not confirm or deny Cuellar’s 2026 ambitions.
TRUMP PARDONS DEMOCRATIC REP. HENRY CUELLAR
“This decision clears the air and lets us move forward for South Texas,” Cuellar wrote on X. “The noise is gone. The work remains. And I intend to meet it head on.”
According to Trump, he did not know Cuellar personally, but knew him as a “beloved Texas Congressman.”