Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), known as among the most moderate Democrats in elected office across the House and Senate, was recently indicted — alongside his wife — by federal authorities in connection with an alleged bribery scheme. The allegations link Cuellar to interests in both Azerbaijan and Mexico.
Predictably, the Congressman is maintaining innocence, and for now, he even says he’s continuing with his campaign for another term. But Gene Wu — a Democratic state legislator in Texas — is now among those saying the state’s newly indicted Cuellar should exit his role entirely. “Cuellar should resign,” Wu wrote.
Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) — known in part for launching an infamous primary campaign against Joe Biden that never really went anywhere, with Biden now Democrats’ presumptive nominee for this year’s presidential election — spoke similarly.
“While the bar for Federal indictment is high, trust in our government is low. That’s why office holders and candidates under indictment should resign or end their campaigns, including Sen. Bob Menendez, Donald Trump, & Rep. Henry Cuellar,” Phillips wrote on his personal account on X, the social site formerly called Twitter.
Menendez is a Democratic Senator from New Jersey who is actually facing criminal allegations somewhat similar to the new case against Cuellar, though the specific foreign interests linked to the Senator in his case are different from Cuellar’s alleged associates/beneficiaries. It looks like Menendez might be on his way out of the Senate, as despite his own predictably antagonistic stance towards the charges, he caved to the obvious political pressure and declined to run for another term… as a Democrat, at least. He did float the possibility of running for another term as an independent, though an independent’s path to re-election closed, some way or another, for Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema.
