Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar’s (D) chief of staff reportedly resigned on Monday, days after the Department of Justice (DOJ) indicted Cuellar and his wife on charges of accepting bribes.
Several sources confirmed that Jacob Hochberg, Cuellar’s chief of staff had resigned from his position, Mica Soellner, a congressional reporter with Punchbowl News reported.
“Hochberg called staff about an hour ago to let them know,” Haley Talbot, a reporter with CNN, wrote in a post on X.
News: Rep. Henry Cuellar’s chief of staff has resigned, per a Dem source with knowledge
— Mica Soellner (@MicaSoellnerDC) May 6, 2024
The DOJ’s indictments came two years after agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) served Cuellar and his wife with a search warrant for their home in Laredo, Texas.
Cuellar and his wife were charged with accepting roughly $600,000 in bribes from an oil and gas company owned by the government of Azerbaijan and a bank with headquarters in Mexico City, starting in December 2014 and going until roughly November 2021, according to the DOJ’s statement.
The DOJ claimed that the bribes were “laundered, pursuant to sham consulting contracts, through a series of front companies and middlemen into shell companies owned by Imelda Cuellar, who performed little to no legitimate work under the contracts.”
In January 2022, FBI agents not only raided Cuellar’s home in Laredo but another building where his office had been located.
Months after the FBI agents searched Cuellar’s home, the lawyer for the Texas representative revealed that law enforcement officials had said Cuellar was not the target of the investigation.
The search conducted on Cuellar’s home was reportedly in relation to Azerbaijan and Cuellar’s behavior and actions with the country’s government.
In the DOJ’s statement, they revealed the charges for the Cuellars:
Congressman Cuellar and Imelda Cuellar are each charged with the following offenses, and if convicted, face maximum penalties as indicated: two counts of conspiracy to commit bribery of a federal official and to have a public official act as an agent of a foreign principal required to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), five years imprisonment on each count; two counts of bribery of a federal official, 15 years imprisonment on each count; two counts of conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud, 20 years imprisonment on each count; two counts of violating the ban on public officials acting as agents of a foreign principal required to register under FARA, two years imprisonment on each count; one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, 20 years imprisonment; and five counts of money laundering, 20 years imprisonment on each count.
