A Texas sheriff is charged with fraud. Trump pardoned his congressman brother

A sheriff on the Texas border with Mexico stands accused of fraud less than two months after his brother, Democratic U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, was pardoned by President Donald Trump on charges of bribery, conspiracy and wire fraud, among other allegations. Now, Webb County Sheriff Martin Cuellar Jr. faces his own separate case, and prosecutors say he improperly helped run an outside disinfecting business using county equipment and employees.

An attorney for Martin Cuellar said Thursday that the sheriff is innocent and that evidence will show he didn't know how others were using the county equipment. A federal grand jury indicted the sheriff on five felony charges in November and the indictment was unsealed Thursday when he made his first court appearance and was released on bond.

In December, Trump pardoned Henry Cuellar and his wife in a federal bribery and conspiracy case, which the president said was part of a “weaponized” justice system. Four days after the pardon, Trump criticized the congressman on Truth Social for “a lack of LOYALTY” because the congressman didn't switch parties to run for reelection this year.

Henry Cuellar has represented a south Texas district in Congress since 2005. Martin Cuellar Jr. has been sheriff in Webb County, home to Laredo, since 2009, and both were reelected in 2024. The congressman kept his seat even though Trump carried his district by 7 percentage points, while the sheriff, also a Democrat, faced no opponent in the November election.

Eric Reed, a Houston attorney representing the sheriff, called the charges "a stretch" and “baseless.”

"They're, we believe, based on some untrue assumptions and narratives that have been fueled perhaps by politics and local rivalries,” Reed said. “My hope is that the decision to charge Sheriff Cuellar and the timing of the charges was not influenced by politics at any level.”

The indictment against the sheriff alleges that he and two of his employees operated a local business, Disinfect Pro Master, that disinfected homes and businesses from 2020 to 2022 and that it received a $500,000 contract to disinfect the buildings of a local school district.

According to the indictment, Cuellar “deemed himself a silent partner” but devised the scheme to operate a for-profit business with resources from the county sheriff's office, including supplies, vehicles, equipment and personnel, without reimbursing the county.

The indictment alleges that Cuellar and the two other men each made more than $175,000 from the business, most of it from the school district contract. The school district did not renew the contract after a citizen raised questions about it at a meeting, according to the indictment.

The sheriff faces three counts of defrauding a local government that receives federal funds, one count of conspiracy and one count of making a financial transaction involving “criminally derived property" by using $71,000 in proceeds from the business to buy a 10-acre property.

If convicted, the sheriff could be sentenced to 10 years in prison, but Reed said prosecutors must show that he knew county property was being misappropriated and intended it to happen.

“Our investigation reveals that just the opposite is true, that he didn’t know,” Reed said.

Reed also represented the Henry Cuellar and his wife, who maintained their innocence. They had been charged with accepting thousands of dollars in exchange for the congressman advancing the interests of a bank in Mexico and an Azerbaijan-controlled energy company.