Russell Berman: “Earlier this month, federal prosecutors bestowed on Republicans what seemed like an election-year gift: charging a senior House Democrat in a competitive district with accepting $600,000 in bribes and acting as a foreign agent. For a party clinging to a threadbare majority in the House, the indictment offered an obvious opportunity for an America First attack. Representative Henry Cuellar of Texas, who prosecutors say acted on behalf of a Mexican bank and the government of Azerbaijan, is now the second Democrat in recent months—after Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey—to be accused of doing the bidding of foreign interests.”
“Yet in the past week, the GOP has been strangely quiet about Cuellar. No one in the party leadership has denounced him. Speaker Mike Johnson, fending off an attempt on his job from the far right, certainly could have used the distraction. But he hasn’t mentioned Cuellar once. Donald Trump even praised him, suggesting that President Joe Biden had sent the FBI after “the Respected Democrat Congressman” because Cuellar had criticized the administration’s handling of the U.S.-Mexico border.”
