BREAKING NEWS: Trump rescinds Cuellar clemency, citing "totally illegal" pardon

[Tommy Carcetti]

Angry at what he perceived to be insufficient gratitude, President Donald Trump announced today he is now rescinding his own pardon he awarded Congressman Henry Cuellar, with specific instructions that the Texas Democrat “immediately be remanded to the custody of the Department of Justice, where he will be returned to his prison and serve out the remainder of his sentence.”

In March 2024, Cuellar was indicted on federal charges of money laundering, bribery and conspiracy, but was granted a pardon by Trump last week; as of the time of his pardon, Cuellar had not yet been convicted, sentenced or even gone to trial on those charges.

Cuellar did express gratitude for Trump’s pardon but then announced he would be running for re-election as a Democrat as opposed to switching parties, a move that infuriated the President and caused him to take the unprecedented move of revoking what was previously deemed to be a “full and unconditional pardon” of Cuellar.

As grounds for the revocation, Trump cited his alleged use of the so-called Autopen on Cuellar’s pardon document as reason to declare it null and void.

“Maybe if Representative Cellular had been lucky enough to have been pardoned under Sleepy Joe Biden, who loved to use the Autopen so, so much, maybe things would have been different for him,” Trump told reporters gathered at the Oval Office earlier today. “Unfortunately for him, he’s dealing with a different President, a President who knows that any document that uses the Autopen has no effect whatsoever.”

Trump has previously decried his predecessor’s use of Autopen on various documents and has even threatened to declare all of President Joe Biden’s actions null and void on such grounds, alleging that there was no proof that the former President had knowingly signed any such documents while in office.

“Try enforcing a mortgage or a car loan with anything other than your own in-person signature,” Trump continued. “You can’t do it. It can’t be done. Everyone knows that for a document to be fully legal, it has to be signed with your own hand and with an actual pen or thick sharpie marker. Or a quill, which many of our founding fathers used. Quills. They don’t teach that to our children in schools anymore, that our founding fathers used to write with quills. Not pens, but quills. Which people don’t realize are actually just big feathers. I guess quills aren’t just woke or politically correct enough these days. But that’s going to change now, believe me. We’re all going to be using quills again soon.”

“I’ll tell you this, though,” Trump added. “If I knew Representative Cellar was going to do the right thing and immediately express his undevoted loyalty to Trump, instead of that Autopen I would have used that real pen to sign his pardon. Or a quill, even.”

The President then proceeded to justify to reporters his revocation of Cuellar’s pardon on other grounds, including his own mental awareness of the pardon.

“I’m sure you all saw me pictures of me napping during that recent Cabinet meeting,” Trump said. “And it was a wonderful nap. I’d even say it was the perfect nap. But maybe that’s when I decided to pardon Representative Cooler. When I was sleeping. It was a sleep pardon.”

“But everyone knows you can’t enforce a sleep pardon,” Trump continued to explain. “Because think of it—everyone sleeps. So technically, anyone could attempt to pardon anyone in their sleep, and that would mean chaos. Only I can pardon people. That’s not just me who says that. It’s in the rule book. You can look it up. It says right here that sleep pardons are just not as good as real pardons.”

The President then proceeded to hold up what appeared to be a black planning notebook with the words “Presidential Rules of Pardoning People” crudely written on masking tape affixed to its cover and waived it around in front of the media.

Meanwhile, Representative Cuellar appeared fully resigned to his fate and had reportedly already packed his bags for an undetermined prison sentence at an unspecified location.

“Am I disappointed?” Cuellar asked. “Certainly, I am. But for an ever-brief moment, I learned the one thing a person needed to gain the respect of Donald Trump, and that one thing was to be charged with multiple felonies. And at least I’ll have that, I suppose.”

DETAILS AT ELEVEN.