Rep. Henry Cuellar’s former campaign manager and a political operative have agreed to plead guilty to federal crimes and are cooperating with the Justice Department’s investigation into the Texas Democrat, according to court documents unsealed on Wednesday.
Mina Colin Strother, Cuellar’s former campaign manager and chief of staff, and Florencio “Lencho” Rendon, a political consultant and businessman from San Antonio, agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering in March. They are now cooperating with prosecutors in the case against Cuellar.
Last week, both Cuellar and his wife, Imelda, were indicted on charges of accepting nearly $600,000 in bribes from two foreign entities: a Mexico City-based bank and an oil and gas company owned by the government of Azerbaijan. The congressman and his wife have pleaded not guilty, with Cuellar asserting his innocence publicly. “Both my wife and I are innocent of these allegations,” he said in a statement. “Everything I have done in Congress has been to serve the people of South Texas.”
According to the court documents, Rendon and Cuellar devised the bribery scheme in 2015 after learning that the Mexican bank needed assistance in doing business within the United States. Rendon agreed to a phony “consulting agreement” with the bank for $15,000 per month, with most of the money eventually being funneled to the Cuellars, prosecutors allege. Rendon, however, didn’t want to send money directly to Imelda, so Cuellar proposed involving Strother as a middleman.
The plan allegedly involved Rendon sending $11,000 a month to Strother, who would then send $10,000 to a company owned by Imelda Cuellar, according to the court documents. Between March 2016 and February 2018, Strother transferred nearly $215,000 to Cuellar’s wife, the filings state.
While the Cuellars’ names do not appear in Strother’s and Rendon’s plea agreements, their case numbers are listed as related to Cuellar’s case in court records. Details in the plea agreements also align closely with those in the indictment against Cuellar.
CNN has reached out to attorneys for Rendon and Strother, as well as an attorney for Cuellar, for comment.
