President Trump is deeply unhappy with the Democratic congressman whom he pardoned this past week, seemingly because Mr. Trump wanted that lawmaker to switch parties. Congressman Henry Cuellar — a conservative Democrat from south Texas — was facing federal corruption charges. 

Mr. Cuellar and his wife, Imelda Cuellar, were indicted last year among other co-conspirators for allegedly taking bribes in exchange for favors in his official capacity as a member of Congress. Prosecutors claimed that Mr. Cuellar took hundreds of thousands of dollars in exchange for helping a Mexican bank avoid anti-money laundering laws. 

The president pardoned Mr. Cuellar because he said he believed the congressman was targeted by the Biden administration for speaking out against the migration crisis at the southern border. Now, it seems instead that the president pardoned him with the hope of gaining a Republican seat in the House. 

“The Dems mercilessly went after Henry with everything they had! They were looking to destroy him, his lovely wife, his two young daughters, and anyone close to them,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social on Sunday morning, saying that he only pardoned Mr. Cuellar after his daughters wrote a letter to the president asking for a grant of clemency for their parents. “I never spoke to the Congressman, his wife, or his daughters, but felt very good about fighting for a family that was tormented by very sick and deranged people — They were treated sooo BADLY!” 

“God was very happy with me that day! THEN IT HAPPENED!!! Only a short time after signing the Pardon, Congressman Henry Cellar announced that he will be ‘running’ for Congress again, in the Great State of Texas … as a Democrat,” Mr. Trump continued.

“Such a lack of LOYALTY, something that Texas Voters, and Henry’s daughters, will not like,” the president wrote.

Mr. Cuellar was asked just minutes after he was pardoned last week if he would consider changing parties to join the GOP. He said he would not, and that he would be running for re-election as a “conservative Democrat.”

Mr. Cuellar is consistently one of his party’s best electoral performers, having won tight races in his heavily Latino south Texas district in the Rio Grande Valley. Republicans have redrawn their congressional maps to target Mr. Cuellar and four other Democrats next year, though many believe that the congressman may be able to hold on to his seat if he can overperform with the Hispanic voters that have long backed him despite a broader shift toward the GOP in recent years. 

On Sunday, during an interview with Fox Business’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” the congressman asserted again that he would run as a Democrat in the 2026 election. 

“I am a conservative Democrat, but I will work with the president. I’ve reached out to his administration,” Mr. Cuellar said. “I said, ‘Hey, can we sit down? I’d love to sit down and see where we can find common ground.”

“If I can work and find common ground, then I certainly want to do that,” he said.