WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump pardoned Texas Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar and his wife in a federal bribery and conspiracy case on Wednesday, citing what he called a “weaponized” justice system.

Trump, who has argued that his own legal troubles were a partisan witch hunt, said on social media without presenting evidence that Cuellar and his wife, Imelda Cuellar, were prosecuted because the congressman had been critical of President Joe Biden’s immigration policies.

Trump, a Republican, said in a social media post that Cuellar “bravely spoke out against Open Borders” and accused Biden, a Democrat, of going after the congressman and his wife “for speaking the TRUTH.”

Federal authorities had charged Cuellar and his wife with accepting thousands of dollars in exchange for the congressman advancing the interests of an Azerbaijan-controlled energy company and a bank in Mexico. Cuellar is accused of agreeing to influence legislation favorable to Azerbaijan and deliver a pro-Azerbaijan speech on the floor of the U.S. House.

Cuellar has said he and his wife are innocent. The couple’s trial had been set to begin next April.

“Henry, I don’t know you, but you can sleep well tonight,” Trump wrote in his social media post announcing the pardon. “Your nightmare is finally over!”

Cuellar thanks Trump for the pardon

Cuellar, who spoke to reporters outside his congressional office on Wednesday, thanked Trump in a brief statement.

“I think the facts have been clear about this, but I would also say I want to thank God for standing during this very difficult time with my family and I,” he said. “Now we can get back to work. Nothing has changed. We will continue working hard.”

Cuellar was asked if he was changing parties and said, “No, like I said, nothing has changed.”

A spokesperson for Biden did not respond to messages seeking comment.

The U.S. Constitution gives the president broad power to grand pardons for federal crimes. The pardons don’t erase a recipient’s criminal record but can be seen as act of mercy or justice, often in cases that further public welfare.

Trump’s pardons this year have included a string of unlikely beneficiaries who are boldfaced names and frequently politically aligned with the president. He pardoned dozens of Republicans accused of participating in his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Biden. He gave clemency to all of 1,500-plus people charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. He’s also pardoned a former Republican governor of Connecticut, an ex-GOP congressman and reality TV stars who had been convicted of cheating banks and evading taxes.

In addition to Cuellar, Trump on Wednesday also pardoned Timothy J. Leiweke, a veteran of the sports and entertainment industry who co-founded Oak View Group.

Leiweke was indicted in July — by Trump’s own Justice Department — for, as federal prosecutors put it at the time, “Orchestrating a conspiracy to rig the bidding process” for a university arena in Austin, Texas. Leiweke had pled not guilty but received what Trump called “a full and conditional pardon” in a clemency statement that didn’t include details on why the president was reversing the case.

Cuellar’s daughters sought a pardon for him

In Trump’s social media post, he included a copy of a letter that Cuellar’s two daughters, Christina and Catherine, had sent to him on Nov. 12 asking that he pardon their parents.

“When you and your family faced your own challenges, we understood that pain in a very human way,” Cuellar’s daughters wrote in their letter. “We watched from afar through the eyes of daughters who knew what it felt like to see parents under fire.”

Cuellar later told reporters, “I know that my daughters sent a letter, but letters are sent not knowing what’s going to happen on that.”

One of Henry Cuellar’s lawyers, Eric Reed, said Wednesday that his legal team made a “pretty substantive presentation” to the Justice Department several months ago seeking dismissal of the charges. He declined to comment on what specifically Cuellar’s legal team discussed with the department but said the arguments made were not political in nature.

In a statement, Imelda Cuellar’s lawyers said Wednesday they were gratified by Trump’s pardon of their client.

“She has always maintained her innocence,” the statement said.

Henry Cuellar still faces an Ethics Committee investigation in the House. It began in May 2024 shortly after his indictment and was reauthorized in July. The committee said it was in contact with the Justice Department about mitigating the risks associated with dual investigations while still meeting its obligations to safeguard the integrity of the House.

Cuellar, who has served in Congress for more than 20 years, is a moderate Democrat who represents an area on the Texas-Mexico border and has a history of breaking with his party when it comes to immigration and firearms.

He was among the most vocal critics of the Biden administration’s response to a record number of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. He also is one of the last Democrats in Congress who opposes abortion rights.

Trump was asked later Wednesday by a reporter if he spoke with GOP leaders in the House about pardoning the Democratic congressman and if there were any concerns it might strengthen Cuellar’s prospects next year.

Trump said, “It didn’t matter” and that Cuellar was targeted for his comments critical of immigration.

“He represents the people on the border and he saw what was happening,” Trump said

The Democrat earlier Wednesday filed to run for reelection.

Cuellar is not the only Democrat Trump has pardoned this year. February, he pardoned former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevichfive years after he had commuted his sentence in a political corruption case.

Like in Cuellar’s case, Trump suggested that New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, faced federal corruption charges because he made comments critical of Biden’s immigration policies.

Trump did not pardon Adams, but after Trump took office, the Justice Department moved to drop the case against the mayor, who had begun working with the Republican administration on immigration issues.

A top Justice Department official, who was also Trump’s defense lawyer in several of his cases, stepped in to seek dismissal in the case.

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Associated Press writers Darlene Superville, Kevin Freking and Will Weissert in Washington and Juan Lozano in Houston contributed to this report.

A progressive group is targeting two Senate Democrats and an independent senator who voted to confirm some of President Donald Trump’s judicial nominees, promising to spend more than $1 million in hopes of pushing congressional Democrats to take a stronger stand against the Republican president.

In a weeklong advertising campaign that began on Wednesday, Demand Justice is targeting only senators who aren’t up for reelection next year: Democrats John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, along with independent Angus King of Maine, who caucuses with Democrats.

But the group’s president, Josh Orton, said the blitz is only an opening salvo. He threatened an escalation targeting more imminently vulnerable lawmakers and those with presidential ambitions unless they “find their moral compass, and stand up to Trump.”

“We want to change Senate Democratic behavior so that they begin acting in a more moral way and in a more politically expedient way,” Orton said.

The push comes after eight members of the Senate Democratic caucus — including Fetterman, Hassan and King — joined with Republicans to end a government shutdowna move that angered large swaths of the party’s base. The party is wrestling over the best strategy to fight what many Democrats see as Trump’s authoritarian ambitions while plotting to bounce back from major losses in 2024.

In confirmation hearings, Trump’s second-term judicial nominees have avoided acknowledging that he lost the 2020 campaign or that the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol was a violent insurrection. Democrats shouldn’t give bipartisan cover to judges who are not “able to answer these simple questions of fact,” Orton said.

Trump’s nominees have also angered many on the left for their views on abortion. A review by The Associated Press found that roughly half of them have revealed anti-abortion views, been associated with anti-abortion groups or defended abortion restrictions.

The Democratic base is clamoring for its representatives to aggressively challenge Trumpwho has pushed the boundaries of presidential power to new heights since returning to the White House in January. Democratic leaders, meanwhile, are grappling with the limits of their power in Washington, where Republicans control both chambers of Congress and the White House.

Fetterman is a frequent target of the left over his staunch support for Israel in the Gaza war and his willingness to buck the majority of his party. He defended his voting record last month, telling CBS News he’s voted overwhelmingly with the rest of the Democrats.

“If Democrats have a problem with somebody that votes 91% of the same times as you are — more than nine out of 10 times — then maybe our party has a bigger problem,” Fetterman said.

Hassan said she voted to reopen the government, despite the backlash on the left, because many of her constituents were suffering and it was unlikely Republicans would agree to a better deal. She said she supported some of Trump’s executive branch nominees “who are qualified or acting in good faith.”

King was the lone member of the Democratic Caucus to vote to confirm a federal judge in Missouri who, as a lawyer, had worked on cases challenging abortion rights. He later said the vote was “a mistake.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s administration warned on Tuesday that it will withhold money for administering SNAP food aid in most Democratic-controlled states starting next week unless those states provide information about people receiving the assistance.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said at a Cabinet meeting Tuesday that the action is looming because those states are refusing to provide data the department requested such as the names and immigration status of aid recipients. She said the cooperation is needed to root out fraud in the program. Democratic states have sued to block the requirement, saying they verify eligibility for SNAP beneficiaries and that they never share large swaths of sensitive program data with the federal government.

States and the federal government split the cost of running SNAP, with the federal government paying the full cost of benefits. After Rollins’ remarks, a USDA spokesperson later explained that the agency is targeting the administrative funds — not the benefits people receive.

Twenty-two states and the District of Columbia previously sued over the request for information, which was initially made in February. A San Francisco-based federal judge has barred the administration, at least for now, from collecting the information from those states.

The federal government last week sent the states a letter urging compliance, but the parties all agreed to give the states until Dec. 8 to respond.

“We have sent Democrat States yet another request for data, and if they fail to comply, they will be provided with formal warning that USDA will pull their administrative funds,” the USDA said in a statement Tuesday.

Federal law allows the USDA to withhold some of the money states receive for administering SNAP if there’s a pattern of noncompliance with certain federal regulations.

But “there’s never authority to withhold the SNAP benefits and, in this case, there’s also no authority to withhold the administrative funding,” said David Super, a law professor at Georgetown University who has studied the food aid program for several decades.

Administration says data is needed to spot fraud

About 42 million lower-income Americans, or 1 in 8, rely on SNAP to help buy groceries. The average monthly benefit is about $190 per person, or a little over $6 a day.

Rollins has cited information provided by states that have complied, saying it shows that 186,000 deceased people are receiving SNAP benefits and that 500,000 are getting benefits more than once.

“We asked for all the states for the first time to turn over their data to the federal government to let the USDA partner with them to root out this fraud, to make sure that those who really need food stamps are getting them,” Rollins said, “but also to ensure that the American taxpayer is protected.”

Her office has not released detailed data, including on how much in benefits obtained by error or fraud are being used.

The USDA said Tuesday evening that 28 states and Guam have complied with the request for information. That list consists primarily of states with Republican governors, though North Carolina — which has a Democratic governor — also has complied.

Twenty-two states have sued to block the request.

Experts say that while there is certainly fraud in a $100 billion-a-year program, the far bigger problems are organized crime efforts to steal the benefit cards or get them in the name of made-up people — not wrongdoing by beneficiaries.

SNAP has been in the spotlight recently

U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes, a Connecticut Democrat who is a co-sponsor of legislation to undo recent SNAP changes, said Rollins is trying to make changes without transparency — or without a role for Congress — and that she is mischaracterizing the program.

“Individuals who are just trying to buy food, those aren’t the ones who are gaming the system in the way that the administration is trying to portray,” Hayes said in an interview on Tuesday before Rollins announced her intention.

The impact of states losing administrative funds for SNAP isn’t clear. But some advocates have warned that other policies that would shift more administrative costs to states could be so costly that some could drop out of SNAP entirely rather than absorb the extra costs. States cannot tap the money used for benefits to cover administrative costs.

The program is not normally in the political spotlight, but it has been this year.

As part of Trump’s big tax and policy bill earlier in the year, work requirements are expanding to include people between the ages of 55 and 64, homeless people and others.

And amid the recent federal government shutdown, the administration planned not to fund the benefits for November. There was a back-and-forth in the courts about whether they could do so, but then the government reopened and benefits resumed before the final word.

In the meantime, some states scrambled to fund benefits on their own and most increased or accelerated money for food banks.

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Mulvihill reported from Haddonfield, New Jersey. Reporters Sophie Austin in Sacramento, California; John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas; Michael Hill in Albany, New York; Steve Karnowski in Minneapolis; David A. Lieb in Jefferson City, Missouri; and Gary D. Robertson in Raleigh, North Carolina, contributed.