“I did the pardons, and made no deal, where a crooked politician would have, but I thought there would be a good chance that Cuellar, who was persecuted by Democrats because they didn’t like him, would have routinely gone over to the Republican Party — The people that saved him from years in prison,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Trump timed his rant before attending a rally in San Antonio, Texas, to drum up support for Cuellar’s GOP opponent, Tano Tijerina, and other Republicans in the Lone Star State.

“The man running against him, Tano Tijerina, is a STAR and, hopefully, will WIN!” Trump wrote. “We call that payback for a disloyal and ungrateful person, a person whose life has been saved only to go back into the clutches of the people that tried so hard to destroy him. Henry Cuellar is a LOSER who, right now, should be serving a longterm jail sentence with his wife in a top level penitentiary.”

Accused briber Henry Cuellar was called out by Donald Trump for not switching parties after the president pardoned him.

Bloomberg via Getty Images

Cuellar, who was charged with bribery and conspiracy when Joe Biden was president, allegedly accepted $600,000 from an Azerbaijan oil company and a Mexican bank “in Exchange for Official Acts as a Member of Congress,” the Department of Justice wrote in a 2024 news release.

Shortly after pardoning Cuellar in December, Trump went ballistic when Cuellar indicated he would run again as a Democrat. The president ripped him for “such a lack of loyalty.”