Henry Cuellar's Azerbaijan Scandal Is a Very American Tale of Oil Addiction

[Celerity]

The FBI’s raid on the Texas congressman’s home is a reminder of how much we normalize ties to foreign (and domestic) oil.

https://newrepublic.com/article/165127/henry-cuellars-azerbaijan-scandal-american-tale-oil-addiction

Last week, a team of FBI agents raided the Laredo, Texas, home of Congressman Henry Cuellar, known as “Big Oil’s Favorite Democrat” for his right-leaning representation of his deep-blue district, as well as the $1.1 million he’s received from energy and natural resource company PACs since his first successful campaign for the House in 2006. From the scarce details available so far, the raid appears to have been connected to Cuellar’s attempts to extend his cozy relationship with the U.S. fossil fuel industry to its counterparts abroad. While it’s early days yet, it’s already looking like the Cuellar scandal is going to showcase the fine line between when it’s legal to shower support on international oil and gas producers and when it’s not.

Cuellar’s home and office were each raided as part of a federal grand jury probe into a number of companies and nonprofits, several of which have ties to the government and state-owned oil company of Azerbaijan. The FBI is involved, along with the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Unit, charged with overseeing “the investigation and prosecution of all federal crimes affecting government integrity, including bribery of public officials, election crimes, and other related offenses.” Cuellar and his wife and at least one campaign staffer were subpoenaed as well. “I’m fully cooperating with law enforcement and committed to ensuring that justice and the law is upheld,” Cuellar said in a video released Tuesday afternoon from his reelection campaign Twitter account. “There is an ongoing investigation that will show there was not wrongdoing on my part.”

It’s not known what Cuellar’s, his wife’s, or his staffer’s place in the probe may be, though reporting in the days since the raid has dug up a long history of Cuellar’s connections to the oil and gas–rich country. A nonprofit called Assembly of the Friends of Azerbaijan reportedly played a “special role” in getting him onto the Congressional Azerbaijan Caucus in 2013. The group was later found to be operating as a front for SOCAR, Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil company, which transferred money to it to sponsor a congressional delegation in the spring of 2013 that Cuellar did not join.

Cuellar and his wife had already traveled to Azerbaijan in January of that year, on the dime of another nonprofit called the Turquoise Council of Americans and Eurasians. As Lee Fang and Ryan Grim reported for The Intercept, that organization’s president, Kemal Oksuz, was a campaign donor to Cuellar who later pleaded guilty to concealing the fact that SOCAR had sponsored the spring congressional delegation, using the Turquoise Council of Americans and Eurasians and the Assembly of the Friends of Azerbaijan as cover. “Records suggest that this individual used the entities interchangeably,” a Congressional Ethics report stated of Oksuz. Cuellar worked with Oksuz, as well, to organize a partnership between Texas A&M University and the Azeri government that resulted in a “Baku Summer Energy School,” which itself had backing from both ExxonMobil and SOCAR. It seems Cuellar saw a kinship between the two oil and gas–producing regions. “Given San Antonio’s role as a rapidly growing city with an unlimited export potential, there is a vast opportunity to strengthen South Texas’s relationship with Azerbaijan,” Cuellar said in a 2015 event with Azerbaijan’s ambassador to the United States, Elin Suleymanov.

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Henry Cuellar’s Corporate Ties: The Texas Democrat and members of his staff have unsettling links to the oil and private prison industries.

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/henry-cuellar/

It’s no secret that Representative Henry Cuellar, the conservative Texas Democrat whose home and campaign office were raided as part of an FBI investigation this week, has deep corporate ties. Cuellar, a nine-term incumbent, is known as “Big Oil’s favorite Democrat.” He’s a top congressional recipient of oil and gas money, as well as private prison industry cash, and has been caught providing favors to lobbyists. Business interests, from Koch-linked groups to the immensely powerful US Chamber of Commerce, prop up Cuellar. And he returns the generosity, using his power in Congress to cater to their preferences and safeguard capital. It also helps when the special interests and corporations dominating the political system have a direct channel to the representative’s office.

One of Cuellar’s recent chiefs of staff, Amy Travieso, has a particularly alarming history, swinging through the revolving door to lobby or work for several organizations that have heavily donated to the Texas Democrat—including the oil and gas industry’s most powerful lobbying group, which bankrolled a dark-money effort that backed his 2020 primary campaign. Travieso first joined Cuellar’s office in 2011 as a deputy chief of staff, a position she held for nearly six years. After her first stint on Cuellar’s team, Travieso registered to lobby on behalf of two groups: the US Chamber of Commerce, where she served as director of congressional and public affairs from February 2017 to December 2017, and the American Hotel and Lodging Association, where she was the vice president of government affairs from January 2018 to June 2020. While working for these organizations, Travieso lobbied for at least 10 pieces of legislation that Cuellar either cosponsored or voted for, according to OpenSecrets data.

In many of these cases, Cuellar was one of a small handful of Democrats voting for Republican-sponsored policies, including votes to kill environmental regulations, stop worker protections, and undermine the Affordable Care Act. Travieso lobbied against the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, Democrats’ sweeping labor reform legislation. Cuellar just happened to be one of seven Democrats to eventually vote against it. But Travieso wasn’t done, and spun through the revolving door yet again. She went back to Cuellar’s office in June 2020, this time as his chief of staff. A year later, she left the high-ranking position to join the American Petroleum Institute, where she’s currently senior director for federal relations. Though she’s not officially registered as a lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute, its federal relations team is dedicated to advancing “the organization’s advocacy goals in Washington,” according to its website.

Since 2011, the American Petroleum Institute has contributed $17,000 directly to Cuellar’s campaign committee. During the 2020 primary, the American Petroleum Institute gave over a million dollars to a mysterious dark-money group, American Workers for Progress, that poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into boosting Cuellar in the final weeks of the wildly competitive race. The three lobbying groups Travieso has worked for have given nearly $80,000 to Cuellar’s campaign, and ramped up the contributions in recent election cycles, according to Federal Election Commission filings. The American Hotel and Lodging Association gave Cuellar $2,000 in the 2008 cycle, but its spending shot up in 2016. In the 2018 and 2020 cycles, when Travieso worked there, the hotel industry group spent a total of $20,000 on Cuellar’s reelection campaigns.

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More background on Cuellar (his district has never once elected a Rethug in its entire history)


MJ Hegar fires back at fellow Democrat Henry Cuellar for helping her GOP opponent fundraise

https://www.texastribune.org/2018/09/13/mj-hegar-fires-back-henry-cuellar-helping-her-gop-opponent-fundraise/


NARAL Pro-Choice America Denounces Rep. Henry Cuellar for Vote Against Women's Health Protection Act

Rep. Cuellar was the lone Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives to vote against critical legislation to safeguard the federal right to abortion

https://www.prochoiceamerica.org/2021/09/24/naral-pro-choice-america-denounces-henry-cuellar-for-vote-against-womens-health-protection-act/


In Texas, a Lone House Democrat Has an ‘A’ Rating From the N.R.A.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/09/us/politics/henry-cuellar-nra.html


He has went on Fox News and attacked Biden and Harris multiple times:

https://www.foxnews.com/media/democrat-henry-cuellar-biden-border-crisis-staged-visit

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/henry-cuellar-knocks-biden-delegation-border-trip

https://www.foxnews.com/media/cuellar-biden-immigration-activists-border-patrol-police-texas-communities

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/parisattacks/texas-rep-moved-on-from-asking-kamala-harris-for-help-at-the-border/vi-AASsRvZ