Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump Outs Himself as Bribery Scandal Goes Public

Episode Date: December 11, 2025

Leave it to Trump to try to bribe a Democratic Congressman who was indicted for bribery. Michael Popok explains how Trump expected Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas to flip from Blue to Red because Trump pardoned Cuellar and his wife of bribery, but Cuellar telling Trump that even an indicted bribe taker as morals and he will remain a Democrat! If you’re 21 or older, get 25% OFF your first order + free shipping @IndaCloud with code LEGALAF at https://inda.shop/LEGALAF! #indacloudpod Visit https://meidasplus.com for more! Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: ⁠https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast⁠ Legal AF: ⁠https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af⁠ MissTrial: ⁠https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial⁠ The PoliticsGirl Podcast: ⁠https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast⁠ Cult Conversations: The Influence Continuum with Dr. Steve Hassan: ⁠https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan⁠ Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: ⁠https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen⁠ The Weekend Show: ⁠https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show⁠ Burn the Boats: ⁠https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats⁠ Majority 54: ⁠https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54⁠ Political Beatdown: ⁠https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown⁠ On Democracy with FP Wellman: ⁠https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman⁠ Uncovered: ⁠https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Canada's Wonderland is bringing the holiday magic this season with Winterfest on select nights now through January 3rd. Step into a winter wonderland filled with millions of dazzling lights, festive shows, rides, and holiday treats. Plus, Coca-Cola is back with Canada's kindness community, celebrating acts of kindness nationwide with a chance at 100,000 donation for the winning community and a 2026 holiday caravan stop. Learn more at canadaswunderland.com. Well, it turns out you can't bribe a congressperson who is indicted for bribery if you're Donald Trump and you gave him a pardon hoping you'd flip a Texas seat from blue to red. Leave it to Donald Trump. I think he could bribe Henry Quayar, a representative from Texas who was looking at a jail sentence for accepting bribes from foreign countries. He thought he was going to bribe him with a pardon for his wife and for him and that he would become a jail sentence for himself. a reliable red vote in Texas.

That's not the way it works, even though that's the way it works in Donald Trump's mind as a transactional guy who thinks everything is a deal. I'm Michael Popak. Let's talk about the big FU that was given by Representative Quayar and his wife effectively to Donald Trump

when they said, yeah, thanks for the pardon, but we're still conservative Democrats. You're on Midas Dutch and Legal A.F. I just find the irony of trying to bribe somebody indicted for bribery. Too good, too delicious to pass up. Let's get to it. Henry Quayar, conservative Democrat from a district in Texas covering places like San Antonio, was indicted, along with his wife for accepting bribes from Azerbaijan and Mexico. I mean, they had the direct link for Izerbaijan and the energy company. After he got the bribe, he gave some pro-Azerbaijan and

energy company speech on the House floor, talking about Azerbaijan. Mexico, too, lined his pockets with money and was picked up by the Biden administration, prosecuted for public corruption, theft of honest services, much the way Senator Menendez in New Jersey, you know, was, that's going to be the next pardon, by the way, convicted of having gold bars that he accepted from Egypt in terms of lobbying on their behalf, undisclosed to the American voter, that he accepted bribes. So what happens? It's now a thing. If you have children, daughters, you write letters to Trump to try to get your parents pardoned.

It's like the, what was their name, the Crisleys on television who stole hundreds of millions of dollars from banks, but their attractive looking daughters wrote a letter or daughter wrote a letter and then the Crisleys are out. Same thing happened with the Quayar's. And so the daughter is write a letter, and Trump lets him out. Now it looks like the reason Trump let him out is because he wanted him to become a reliable red seat, a red vote. And Quayar has said publicly, including on Fox, listen, I'm a Texan first, I'm an American first,

a Texan second, and a Democrat third in that order. And I am a conservative, but I caucus with Democratic Party. and thank you for the pardon, but no. Now, the maps are very important to Donald Trump. We know the United States Supreme Court is going to allow a map that was redrawn in the last six months by Texas to eliminate five blue seats and make it five seats redder has been approved effectively by the Supreme Court for this upcoming midterm election. Because we just got the ruling for the United States Supreme Court led by Justice Alito that they're not going to interfere with map. making this close, quote unquote, to an election. And they don't see racial gerrymandering, what they see as Democratic-Republican gerrymandering. They see Republican districting and redrawing

to improve the odds of Republicans, much the way California has done it with Prop 50 with their new maps. With that as a backdrop, of the five seats in Texas that were eliminated, that were Democratic, Henry Quayar was not one of them. So he's got effectively a safe seat. It got a lot safer now that Donald Trump has effectively taken the shade or shadow of being an indicted bribe taker off the table. I think that just increased the odds of Henry Quayar to be supported by the voters of his district and send them back to Congress. In a way, it actually supports or improves his bona fides as being a firebrand conservative who's willing to stand up to everybody, including the Department of Justice, and work with Donald Trump if he has to on behalf of Texans

and himself and work with the Democrats in other ways. But Donald Trump's all pissed off because he didn't get what he wanted. He wanted effectively that seat to flip with Quayar going, thank you for the pardon, sir. I'm now a Republican. That didn't happen. Let's first watch Quayar with Maria Bargaromo on Morning Futures being grilled because, you know, she's a propagandist about being disloyal to the president and being attacked for it because he wouldn't flip and become a Republican. Let's play the clip. Congressman, thanks so much for being here. Congratulations on the pardon. Thank you so much and it's so good talking to you again. And do you believe that you were indicted because of your criticism of Biden's open border?

Absolutely. The president was right. And I, now looking at all the evidence and looking at everything, definitely I feel that I was weaponized. You know, they used the department to go after myself and my family. And I'll tell you something, Barry, if they want to come after me because I was a critic about open borders, that's one thing. But you don't bring the family in. You just don't do that. You don't, as a prosecutor, you just don't do that type of situation. Now, Donald Trump was originally asked about his pardon and whether that improved the odds of Quayar getting reelected in the White House several days ago. And there, he was relatively calm.

Well, that's not the reason I did it. You know, it was weaponization. And, you know, we all have something in common with Biden's Department of Justice. Let's play the clip. Did you speak with House Republican leadership about your decision to pardoned, Congressman Henry Quayar?

And are you concerned that you made a vulnerable Democrat, perhaps less vulnerable with that decision? It didn't matter. He was a respected person. He was treated very badly because he said that people should not be allowed to pour into our country. And he was right. He didn't like open borders.

He was on the border. He represents a very respected man. He represents the people on the border. And he saw what was happening. And as soon as he made that statement, I then said, I'll bet he gets this. indicted. And that's what happened. You know, I put out my truth from that, well, I did a truth. Wonderful truth. We love truth. But what happened is he got indicted for speaking the truth. And his wife got indicted, Imilda. And that's sort of a first. Usually they leave the wives alone, right?

Don't they, typically they indict somebody, put him in jail for the rest of his life, but the wife can just sit home and cry, or she'll find a new man. A lot of times they find a new man makes him much happier. In fact, a lot of times they like that man better than the one that's in jail. Holiday headlines, family debates, and group texts that won't quit. You deserve a ceasefire. Into Cloud is your online cannabis dispensary for quieting the noise. Gubbies, curated flowers, pre-rolls, and now zero sugar, zero calorie THC, THC, THC,

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You know, the way I think of it is like, switching parties is like switching religions. you know, be like, I can't believe he's not giving up Catholicism and becoming a Jew. I mean, for me, politics is as part of the fiber of my being as my spiritual embrace, you know, my religion. You know, and for somebody to say, switch, you know, it's not that easy, you know, just because you, and why would you trust Henry Quayor? He got indicted for bribery. I really don't understand. But here is what Donald Trump said

now that he's all pissed off that Quayar is not playing by the rules. He's an ingrate. He says, such a lack of loyalty, something that Texas voters and Henry's daughters will not like. Right, they're going to side with Daddy Trump over their father.

Oh, well, next time. No more Mr. Nice Guy. When was this guy ever Mr. Nice guy? By the way, where does he have the time to do the presidency? I mean, we already had the reporting that Donald Trump rolls into the office at like noon, rolls out at five. He golfs dozens of days a month. And on top of that, he's writing like 100 social media posts in an evening or people around him are. How does he have time to even be the president?

Why does he even want to be the president of the United States? Why doesn't he just follow Melania out the door? She obviously threw her in the towel. She doesn't want to be the first lady. She didn't want to be first lady first time. You know? But what's she busy doing? Overseeing the demolition of the White House for Christmas?

Nothing says holidays this time of year like Jack Habers at the White House. So he goes on. He says, no more Mr. Nice Guy. What, what, in case Quayar gets indicted again? I mean, it is possible. Menendez got indicted twice and got convicted once. You mean, even when he got indicted in a prior bribery scheme, it did not lead him to be chasing, and he did not learn a lesson.

He just took another bribe five or eight years later and then tried to blame the girlfriend or the wife that he had at the time. She made him do it. That's chivalry. That's bravery. That's profile and courage. At least Quayor didn't blame his wife, even though she was indicted along with him

for putting money in her pocket. So the takeaway from this hot take, is as we've said, if you see a Trump pardon, there is a transactional component to it. It either benefits himself, Donald Trump politically or financially, or both.

So that's why Menendez doesn't get him out of jail because a senator from New Jersey, Senator for New Jersey, who took bribes like that. That doesn't help. Donald Trump gets no benefit out of that. Quayar, I can flip a seat. Honduras ex-president serving 45 years for cocaine trafficking. Single-handedly brought more cocaine into America during that period than any other person,

he can help me influence the Honduran election, which backfired as well. Another backfire. Because it's not going to go hard-right conservative in Honduran. Honduras. It's going to go moderate. And he pissed off the Hondurans by releasing the president from the party that he was trying to support. In the name of drug interdiction, cocaine interdiction, you release the cocaine trafficker? So that backfired. See, Donald Trump's trying to turn all the world red. He wants all of Europe to go hard right. He just gave him a lesson, right? A national security document that the Russians love attacking Europe, saying that your

immigration policies are out of whack, that you're going to lose your countries and your cultures. You need to become hard right. You need to make Europe great again. And we're going to turn our attention to the Western Hemisphere only. At a time when Russia is chomping at the bit to attack in Europe has said they're planning an attack, they're planning to attack Europe if they have to. And they just try to down the plane for the EU president, her radar to crash the plane and kill her and assassinate her. Now is the time to abandon Europe. But when you see a financial pardoned, a guy or a person who's been pardoned, hundreds of millions of dollars was at stake, probably is going to benefit the Trump family fortune in some

way. Yeah, that's what you always have to think. It's never without a string attached. It's never for the right reason. You know, the evidence, new evidence, exonerating the person. They were sentenced to a too high level of sentencing guideline crimes because there was a disparity between cocaine and crack and black people got the raw end of the stick and they got longer sentences. It's never like that. It's always, well, the Biden Department of Justice

was weaponized, right? Because they went after crime. Let's just remember this. Department of Justice now under Donald Trump does not have a public corruption unit, is not going after foreign and foreign bribes, does not have a public integrity unit to speak of, and doesn't really have a civil rights unit to speak of.

So I don't know what you call that. That's just the chloroforming and the reorientation of the Department of Justice to only go after Donald Trump's enemies and not do a darn thing towards and for Americans. We'll continue to follow it all right here on the Midas Touch Network and LegalAF. I have a personal ask, folks, we're close to the one million, subscriber mark, that landmark over on legal AF YouTube, where I do a lot of my work, along with other contributors. Probably going to go to 980,000 this weekend coming up, and then we're trying

to get to $1 million before Hanukkah Christmas. With your help, we will. The bigger we get, the more your voice is heard, the more street credibility we have to bring on amazing contributors. The American Civil Liberties Union is coming on with us. Democracy Forward is there with us, court accountability action is there with us, and some other amazing contributors. Join me. Find out if you're a subscriber. It's all for free. No paywall, no outside investors. Same thing on Legal AF substack. Become a paid member, and you get access to a whole treasure trove of information at the intersection of law and politics. So until my next report, I'm Michael Popak. Can't get your fill of LegalAF. Me neither. That's why we form the Legal AF substack. Every time

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