Trump says he’s backing Cuellar’s GOP rival despite pardoning him after daughters’ ‘heart-wrenching’ plea

President Donald Trump on Tuesday backed Republican challenger Tano Tijerina against Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, just weeks after pardoning the longtime Democrat in a corruption case Trump said was driven by Biden-era political retaliation.

Trump pardoned Cuellar in December after the Department of Justice, under the Biden administration, indicted him and his wife for allegedly taking roughly $600,000 in bribes from an Azerbaijan-owned energy company and a Mexican bank.

"Nobody knows Henry Cuellar better than Donald J. Trump," Trump wrote in a fiery Truth Social post Tuesday afternoon. "I studied his records, learned about his financing, and listened to his two wonderful daughters beg me to help the mother and father that they love."

Trump described Cuellar's daughters' letters as "heart-wrenching and beautiful," noting only he could "solve" their father's "problems."

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"He and his wife were headed to jail for up to 20 years because he was ‘stupid’ in what he did but, above all, because the Biden Administration practiced Political Weaponization on Cuellar and his wife because they didn’t agree with his policies on the Southern Border," Trump wrote. "He was a weak and incompetent version of me, who wanted the Border closed to criminals, drug dealers, people from mental institutions and, above all, murderers and heavy-handed criminals that were sitting in jails and mental institutions, and should never have been given the right to be released into our Country."

The president added Cuellar's views were "not strong," but alleged Democrats retaliated against him in an effort to jail him for life.

"Being an expert on Political Weaponization, based on what the Biden Losers had done to me, and without having ever met Henry Cuellar, and in particular because of the magnificence of the letter drawn by his daughters asking me to help ‘Mom and Dad,’ I gave him and Mrs. Cuellar a full and unconditional Pardon," Trump wrote. "In doing so, I never assumed he would be running for Office again, and certainly not as a Democrat."

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Trump said "despite doing [Cuellar] by far the greatest favor of his life, 20 years of FREEDOM," he will endorse Tijerina for Congress because Cuellar's views are "not nearly as good or strong."

The Justice Department previously said Cuellar's alleged bribe payments were laundered through a series of front companies and middlemen into shell companies owned by his wife, Imelda, who performed "little to no legitimate work under the contracts."

In exchange, the DOJ said Cuellar allegedly agreed to use his office to influence U.S. foreign policy in favor of Azerbaijan.

Tijerina, who was drafted by the Milwaukee Brewers in 1993, served three terms as Webb County judge after retiring from baseball.