Hey, everyone, it's Sam Stein. I'm managing out of the bulwark here with Bullwork Takes.

We are going to be talking about this rather incredible moment over the past couple of days involving one of Donald Trump's pardons.

It crested on Sunday morning in kind of hilarious fashion. I'll be talking about that. And a second pardon that is also causing some troubles for Republicans.

But the one I want to focus on first is Henry Quayar. He's a congressman down in Texas. He's a Democrat.

Kind of abruptly last week, Donald Trump announced that he was pardoning Quayar. Basically,

this goes back to 2004 when the Biden

Justice Department indicted

the congressman. The allegations were that he

took, I think, $600,000

in bribes from an

Azerbaijan oil and gas company.

It is a big deal that a congressman, a sitting

congressman was indicted. Quara is this moderate

Democrat. He's like one of the last

anti-abortion Democrats. He's from

Southwest Texas border. He has always been a target for Republicans because he's in one of these

districts that is really moving towards Trump. And in fact, I think his district voted for Trump in

2020 and 4 by like 8 to 10 points. It's one of these districts that

was targeted in this redistricting of Texas, although it kind of stayed around that area where

a choir could potentially win, but it was unclear. So it was kind of a big deal when Trump pardoned

the guy because it seemed like counterintuitive, right?

Why would you want to get rid of an indictment of a sitting Democratic congressman who you're

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