Trump pardons Democratic congressman in bribery case

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump has pardoned a Democratic member of Congress in a bribery case, saying the justice system had been “weaponized” by his predecessor Joe Biden.

“I am hereby announcing my full and unconditional PARDON of beloved Texas Congressman Henry Cuellar … I don’t know you, but you can sleep well tonight – Your nightmare is finally over!” Trump said on his Truth Social platform on Wednesday.

Cuellar and his wife had been facing several charges of conspiracy and bribery based on accusations from prosecutors that they had accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of bribes from an oil and gas company partly owned by the government of Azerbaijan.

The couple have denied the charges for which they were facing trial in April.

“I want to thank President Trump for his tremendous leadership and for taking the time to look at the facts,” Cuellar said in response to the pardon in a post on X on Wednesday.

Trump, without citing evidence, said that former president Biden’s administration has “weaponized the Justice System against their political opponents”, adding that Cuellar had spoken out against “Open Borders and the Biden Border ‘Catastrophe.’”

Trump, who has blamed his own past legal problems on political “witch hunts,” has also made several high-profile pardons since taking office for a second term this year.

Former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez was released from a West Virginia prison where he was facing more than four decades behind bars on narcotics and weapons charges on Monday following a surprise pardon from the US president.

Trump has also offered legal relief to a Democratic politician in the past, in February pardoning Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich over a political corruption case.