Over time, Consultant Henry Cuellar usually harked again to the small home in Laredo, Texas. It was there that his dad and mom, one-time migrant staff who spoke no English, raised him and his seven siblings to worth exhausting work and beware the risks of debt.
The references in speeches, marketing campaign commercials and interviews have been supposed to forge affinity with the largely Hispanic residents of his hometown. They demonstrated that “I’m one in every of you,” as his marketing campaign web site put it in 2004, when he first received election to Congress as a Democrat representing Laredo, one of many poorest cities within the nation.
By 2013, these hardscrabble beginnings appeared a distant reminiscence.
Mr. Cuellar had develop into the hub of a bustling small enterprise that blurred the traces between his political operation, his companies and his household, affording him trappings of affluence whilst he typically strained to make ends meet.
He had just lately bought a penthouse house in Washington’s bustling Navy Yard neighborhood close to Nationals Park and a pair of properties in Laredo, together with a 6,000-square-foot home with a pool and cabana in a gated neighborhood on a road known as Property Drive. He took on an rising quantity of debt, and his internet price declined.
A brand new supply of money quickly revealed itself, federal prosecutors are actually saying.
Beginning in 2014, Mr. Cuellar and his spouse, Imelda Cuellar, accepted at the least $598,000 over seven years from a Mexican financial institution and an oil firm owned by the Azerbaijani authorities, in line with prosecutors.
The Cuellars have been charged earlier this month with accepting bribes, cash laundering and violating overseas lobbying legal guidelines by attempting to affect the federal government on behalf of their overseas paymasters. They pleaded not responsible and have been launched after every paid a bond of $100,000.
In a press release earlier than the indictment, Mr. Cuellar proclaimed his innocence. Some of the conservative Home Democrats — and the one one who publicly opposes abortion rights — Mr. Cuellar vowed to proceed his marketing campaign for re-election, although the indictment made the seat a extra engaging pickup alternative for Republicans looking for to guard their slender majority within the chamber.
Two political consultants who prosecutors say aided the Cuellars’ scheme have agreed to plead responsible to conspiring with Mr. Cuellar to launder greater than $200,000 from the Mexican financial institution.
Eric Reed, a lawyer for Mr. Cuellar, rejected any “suggestion that there’s a monetary desperation that will create a motive for bribery. That didn’t exist.” Mr. Cuellar “lives inside his means, and like anybody else, his internet price goes up and down,” Mr. Reed mentioned in an interview “The truth that he’s had success doesn’t change his roots. He’s by no means forgotten the place he got here from,” Mr. Reed mentioned, including, “that is the American dream, and he’s in public service to make it actual for others.”
Mr. Cuellar, the lawyer mentioned, has adopted marketing campaign finance and ethics guidelines. “There was no quid professional quo,” Mr. Reed mentioned. “His actions on this matter have been lawful, clear and fully according to the actions of a lot of his colleagues and constant together with his personal rules and the pursuits of the nation.”
Mr. Cuellar’s indictment was solely the second time in fashionable historical past {that a} sitting member of Congress was charged with performing as a overseas agent. The primary, Senator Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, has additionally pleaded not responsible and is about to go on trial this week.
In some methods, although, Mr. Cuellar’s story — as detailed within the indictment, marketing campaign finance filings, property data and congressional disclosure statements — traces a well-known Washington trajectory. Newcomers to Congress are sometimes tempted by the spoils of workplace and shortly discover their funds and political lives intertwined.
Deep-pocketed particular pursuits dangle political motion committee contributions and junkets, in addition to paydays for relations. In Washington, members of Congress are invited to unique golf equipment and black-tie gala capabilities by donors, rich colleagues and lobbyists. Of their districts, they’re courted by enterprise house owners looking for favor.
The lure will be more durable to withstand for the comparatively small group of politicians from humble backgrounds who typically wrestle to make ends meet whereas balancing household lives again house with the excessive value of residing in Washington a lot of the yr.
Mr. Cuellar instructed in his assertion that the Home Ethics Committee and an unnamed “nationwide regulation agency” had cleared his monetary exercise.
The proclamation, and his lawyer’s feedback, trace at a attainable protection. They forged his conduct in Congress as typical policymaking unrelated to any exterior pursuits. Mr. Cuellar’s assertion intimates that any funds to his spouse have been for consulting work based mostly on abilities that she was entitled to make use of to earn a residing.
Whereas there are pages and pages of guidelines limiting exterior earnings, presents and marketing campaign spending, members of Congress usually encompass themselves with sycophantic employees members disinclined to push again, in addition to subtle legal professionals who supply recommendation on navigating legal guidelines limiting the spending of taxpayer and donor cash.
“It’s an previous story. It occurs to folks,” mentioned Jackie Speier, who stepped down final yr after 15 years as a Democratic consultant from California. “You see when their mild will get too vibrant, their ethical compass has no approach to measure proper from mistaken.”
Ms. Speier had been a number one congressional supporter of Azerbaijan’s regional rival Armenia.
The indictment doesn’t establish Ms. Speier by title, nevertheless it refers to textual content messages through which Mr. Cuellar and his Azerbaijani contacts sought to neutralize her efforts to supply funding to Armenia, which Azerbaijan considered a slap within the face. She declined to touch upon the costs towards Mr. Cuellar, saying solely that Congress will be “an intoxicating surroundings.”
The spending detailed within the indictment contains utilizing the overseas cash to repay $58,000 in bank card funds and different money owed, fund residing bills and make purchases together with a $12,000 customized robe for Ms. Cuellar and a $7,000 down fee for a brand new automobile. It presents a really totally different image of Mr. Cuellar from the one he projected again in Laredo.
Some constituents mentioned the Cuellars by no means showcased their wealth, whilst they moved to the gated neighborhood. Melissa R. Cigarroa, a Laredo metropolis councilwoman who has backed Mr. Cuellar via his latest major races, mentioned the Cuellars, and particularly Ms. Cuellar, have been “not ostentatious.”
Mr. Cuellar has repeatedly informed the story of how his dad and mom toiled for years as migrant farm staff earlier than settling in Laredo, when Mr. Cuellar, their firstborn, was a toddler. They raised him and his siblings on as little as $300 in month-to-month wages his father earned as a gardener, and his kids have been usually enlisted to assist with the work.
“Different children acquired up on Saturday and watched the cartoons,” Mr. Cuellar informed The Houston Chronicle for an article he posted on his official Home web site in 2014. “My dad informed us, ‘You end your work first.’ So we’d be out on the daybreak, mowing and raking, so we may watch ‘The Jetsons.’”
Mr. Cuellar informed The Chronicle that his father, who died in 2019, “doesn’t like debt.”
In a marketing campaign commercial, he mentioned that “I washed dishes whereas I labored exhausting on my means from Laredo School to Georgetown College.” After incomes graduate levels in enterprise and the regulation, he mentioned within the advert, “I turned down jobs in huge cities and got here house to Laredo to make a distinction.”
He began his personal regulation observe and was elected to the Texas Home of Representatives in 1986 at age 30, serving for 14 years. In 2001, he was chosen by Rick Perry, a Republican serving as Texas’ governor, to be secretary of state.
Alongside the way in which, he assembled a small portfolio of rental properties in Laredo. He created an organization known as HC Leases to handle the properties, together with his childhood house, which is owned by his sister, and the home subsequent door, which he owns. One other firm he managed, HC Air, operated a small non-public airplane he purchased earlier than his election to Congress.
His political operation got here to overlap together with his companies and his household.
Throughout his early congressional runs, his marketing campaign committee reported to the Federal Election Fee that it paid $11,500 in lease to his regulation agency and HC Leases, although the filings additionally present that Mr. Cuellar donated about $159,000 price of lease, workplace furnishings and gear to his marketing campaign. The marketing campaign paid about $92,000 to HC Air for air journey, earlier than he bought his airplane in 2011 for as a lot as $100,000, F.E.C. filings and private monetary disclosure statements present.
His marketing campaign would later pay a complete of greater than $15,000 to his relations, F.E.C. filings present, together with his spouse, his two daughters and his sister Rosie Cuellar, a former Webb County official now working for the Texas State Home. Mr. Cuellar’s brother Martin is the Webb County sheriff.
In 2013, Mr. Cuellar disclosed that he had taken on money owed totaling as a lot as $1.15 million, together with a mortgage that originally ranged from $50,000 to $100,000 from a donor to purchase one other property in Laredo. The donor, Rasoul Khaledi, owns a series of duty-free shops alongside the Mexican border, together with in Laredo, in addition to two elsewhere in Mexico. He and his household donated tens of hundreds of {dollars} to Mr. Cuellar’s campaigns, and 4 of Mr. Khaledi’s kids got unpaid internships within the congressman’s workplace, as reported by the Heart for Public Integrity. Mr. Khaledi didn’t reply to requests for remark.
When the loans began showing on Mr. Cuellar’s private monetary disclosure statements, he blamed the financial downturn.
“This recession has impacted all People — from farmers to small-business house owners to public servants — and I’m not exempt from it,” he informed The Fort Value Star-Telegram.
His internet price dipped as little as $29,000 in 2013, down from a minimal of $200,000 the yr earlier than, in line with an evaluation of the disclosure filings by the nonpartisan web site OpenSecrets. (These filings require officers to listing solely a variety of their property and liabilities, slightly than exact quantities.)
It isn’t clear why the Azerbaijani and Mexican pursuits initially reached out to Mr. Cuellar, although the Azerbaijani oil trade, together with the state-owned firm that prosecutors say funded the funds to the Cuellars, keep a presence in Texas.
In 2013, a nonprofit funded by the state-owned oil firm organized and paid for a visit to Istanbul and Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, for Mr. Cuellar and his spouse. The journey, which value greater than $26,000, included briefings with officers from the Azerbaijani authorities and oil firm, meals and excursions of museums and palaces, in line with a congressional disclosure assertion.
Shortly after they returned, Azerbaijani officers mentioned as “a prime precedence” the necessity to domesticate relationships with members of the Home Appropriations Subcommittee on State, International Operations and Associated Applications, which included Mr. Cuellar, in line with his indictment.
The “excellent news is that Cuellar was simply in Baku,” an Azerbaijani diplomat wrote to a consultant of the oil firm.
A couple of yr later, Mr. Cuellar and his spouse have been modifying a draft of an settlement below which the oil firm would pay month-to-month charges to an organization she had created, in line with the indictment.
Sylvia Bruni, the chair of the Webb County Democratic Occasion, in a message to native Democrats, known as the claims within the indictment “distressing, casting a darkish cloud over all our sincerest efforts on behalf of our neighborhood.” However she wrote that the occasion would “stay quiet concerning the allegations, presuming innocence and trusting the justice system to work pretty.”
As information of Mr. Cuellar’s indictment unfold final week, constituents reacted with shock at allegations they mentioned have been so at odds with the person they knew. In interviews with greater than two dozen voters in his district, many described Mr. Cuellar as humble, hard-working or just “un buen hombre”: an excellent man.
“He’s one in every of us,” mentioned Juan Eladio Rivera, 68, a Democrat and retired carpenter in Roma, Texas. “Individuals need to knock him out of energy as a result of he has been in workplace for therefore lengthy, however he has been in workplace for therefore lengthy as a result of he has finished good issues.”
Jazmine Ulloa contributed reporting from Laredo, Texas.