Ending the strange silence of Congress on the Cuellar/Azerbaijan scandal

In a political landscape defined by increasingly vocal outrage over every new scandal, the stunning congressional silence surrounding the Henry Cuellar bribery case is both deafening and deeply troubling. Cuellar, a Democrat from Texas, stands accused by our federal government, in a 54-page indictment unsealed on April 30, of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from Azerbaijan’s oil-rich Aliyev regime in order to manipulate U.S. policy against Christian Armenians. Three of his associates have already pleaded guilty to laundering these bribes, yet the halls of Congress remain eerily quiet.

In an era defined by the rapid-fire news and a growing public demand for accountability, the lack of response from our elected representatives is nothing short of astonishing. It is as if they’ve all suddenly lost their voices, or perhaps there is something about this scandal that is too sensitive to touch – a concern underscored by recent indications coming from Cuellar’s defense that his prosecution might risk the revelation of classified U.S. documents. One can’t help but question whether this silence is a result of some signal from a dark corner of the U.S. foreign policy establishment that Azerbaijan gets a free pass for interfering in U.S. policy-making. They certainly were given a blank check last year to commit genocide against Artsakh’s (Nagorno Karabakh) indigenous Christian Armenians.