It’s gotten buried a bit underneath news about the negotiations over a cease-fire in Gaza, the related protests on U.S. college campuses, and the ongoing trial of a former president for allegedly covering up payments to a pornography actress, but high-profile Democratic Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar was indicted on Friday by the Department of Justice in Houston. He says he is not guilty of the charges and will stand for reelection as planned this fall.
Cuellar, a relatively conservative Democrat who represents a district that stretches along the U.S.–Mexico border around Laredo and pokes up to San Antonio, is charged with 14 counts of conspiracy, wire fraud, and so forth related to allegations that he was paid under the table to influence U.S. policy on behalf of Azerbaijan’s national oil company, SOCAR, and the Mexican bank Banco Azteca. (Neither Banco Azteca nor SOCAR, nor any of their employees, have been charged with a crime.)
A longtime incumbent, Cuellar won his general-election race in 2022 by a wide margin. But his district, the 28th, has a significant population of Hispanic and/or Latino voters and has become more Republican in recent years as those groups have trended rightward. The Cook Political Report rates it as having a Democratic “lean” of 3 points—which, roughly speaking, means a generic Democrat would be expected to beat a generic Republican in the district by only a 3-point margin. That’s close enough to mean that Cuellar’s indictment and potential conviction could threaten Dems’ efforts to retake the House of Representatives, which Republicans currently hold by a tenuous four votes.
The case is similar to that of Democratic New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez, another longtime incumbent who was indicted last September for allegedly accepting bribes from three men in New Jersey who were seeking to influence U.S. policy toward Egypt, among other things. Menendez’s trial is set to begin next week, and he says that if he is not convicted he still might run for reelection in November as an independent. While he’d be very unlikely to win such a race, he could potentially siphon enough votes away from the Democrats’ presumptive nominee, current Rep. Andy Kim, to throw the seat to Republicans.
So, both of these members of Congress are in high-stakes races that they are refusing to drop out of despite facing corruption indictments. But there’s another major similarity between the two stories as well: Wives!
Menendez’s wife Nadine was also charged in his case, and the allegations against the couple include claims that the men accused of seeking favors from the senator bought Nadine Menendez a Mercedes convertible and paid her to hold a fake no-show “job” at a halal-certification business. Cuellar’s wife Imelda was also indicted; she’s accused of receiving the alleged bribe payments from SOCAR and Banco Azteca through shell companies she owned that were ostensibly providing the firms with “consulting” services. The government alleges that, actually, Imelda Cuellar did “little to no legitimate work” in return for the hundreds of thousands of dollars she was paid.
A statement issued by Cuellar says his wife is innocent. Nadine Menendez has pleaded not guilty, although in a disclosure that may have caused some awkwardness around the proverbial Englewood Cliffs dinner table, Robert Mendendez’s attorneys told a judge in January that his potential testimony at trial might implicate her. Since then, however, the pair’s cases have been separated from each other in a way that will preclude anything he says from being used against his spouse.
Does the Democratic Party have an (alleged) Bribery Wife Guy problem? Are liberals soft on wife crime? This fall, the voters will have their say.