Indicted South Texas Rep. Cuellar spends majority of campaign cash on legal fees

South Texas U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar has diverted more than half of his 2024 campaign cash into covering legal expenses as he faces federal charges of accepting bribes from Azerbaijan’s state-run oil company and a Mexican bank, government transparency group Open Secrets reports.

Nearly $785,000 of the Cuellar campaign’s $1.5 million in spending through the end of March was on legal fees, according to nonpartisan Open Secret’s review of federal data. That’s a significant change from earlier cycles, during which the campaign spent the bulk of its money on media buys and other more routine expenses.

“Before I took any action, I proactively sought legal advice from the House Ethics Committee, who gave me more than one written opinion, along with an additional opinion from a national law firm,” Cuellar — a Democrat whose district includes a portion of San Antonio — said earlier this month in a statement denying allegations against he and his wife Imelda.

The Cuellars were indicted May 3 on charges of accepting $600,000 in bribes from an Azerbaijani energy company and Mexico’s Banco Azteca in exchange for trying to alter U.S. policy to their benefit, the Justice Department alleges. If convicted and given the maximum sentence, Cuellar could end up serving decades in prison.

The largest share of legal fees covered by Cuellar’s campaign coffers went to British law firm Clifford Chance LLP, which is representing the congressman in the federal probe, according to Open Secrets. The campaign has flowed $690,000 to the firm since the beginning of the 2024 cycle.

According to the nonprofit’s analysis, other legal expenses from Cuellar’s campaign funds include:

• $46,900 paid to Perkins Coie, a law firm known for offering compliance services to Democratic lawmakers.
• $28,100 to Washington, D.C.-based firm Miller and Chevalier, which also represented former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
• $25,000 to MoloLamken LLP, a New York-based firm specializing in “complex litigation,” including both civil and criminal cases.

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This article appears in May 1-14, 2024.