MIAMI — Marco Rubio and David Rivera charted a rise in this city’s famously scrappy politics together.
Both sons of Cuban immigrants, they befriended each other as campaign volunteers in the 1990s and climbed the ranks of local politics side-by-side. As young state legislators, they bought a house together near the capital in Tallahassee, where they orchestrated Rubio’s rise to Florida House Speaker and then launched winning bids to Congress.
But on Tuesday, the two longtime friends will likely face each other again in a very different setting: a federal courtroom. Rubio, now the Secretary of State, is expected to testify as a witness against his onetime confidant, who is accused of serving as an unregistered foreign agent for Venezuela’s socialist government.
The extraordinary development will mark the first time in more than four decades that a sitting Cabinet member testifies in a criminal trial. Although U.S. officials regularly appear at hearings on Capitol Hill, there is little precedent for them to testify as witnesses before a federal jury.
Rubio’s role in the money-laundering trial spotlights his long-standing ties with Rivera, a scandal-plagued former congressman twice investigated by state or federal officials. The relationship has long been seen as a political liability for Rubio and could reemerge as an issue if he runs for president in 2028.
Federal prosecutors allege that Rivera was secretly working for Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to lobby the first Trump administration to soften its stance on that South American country. The former congressman faces charges including conspiracy, failing to register as a foreign agent, money laundering and tax evasion — to which he has entered a not guilty plea.
Because the trial concerns Rivera’s consulting contract with the U.S. subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, it will also touch on matters on which Rubio has been intimately involved as President Trump’s top foreign-policy envoy. In January, years after charges against Rivera were filed, the administration captured Maduro and brought him to New York to face trial on narco-terrorism charges.
That Rubio will spend several hours detailing his past dealings while the United States is embroiled in several international conflicts could prove uncomfortable for Rubio.
“I’m sure he’d rather be in the Strait of Hormuz than here,” said Edward Shohat, Rivera’s defense attorney, regarding the waterway near Iran that has become a major energy chokepoint amid Trump’s war with Iran.
Rivera, 60, was instrumental in helping Rubio, 54, rise from a law-school graduate to Capitol Hill. Three decades ago, he got Rubio one of his first jobs in politics working for Bob Dole’s 1996 presidential campaign.
As they continued their parallel climbs, Rivera later crafted the strategy that helped Rubio become speaker of the Florida House at age 34. The two got so close that Rivera was reportedly present for the births of each of Rubio’s four children.
Once they made it to Washington in 2010, however, their paths diverged — with Rivera losing reelection and two subsequent campaigns and facing a campaign-finance investigation from the Federal Election Commission. By the time Rubio ran for president in 2016, his campaign said it had nothing to do with Rivera showing up at one early GOP debate.
Gabriel Groisman, a Republican political consultant in South Florida, called Rubio an “honest broker” and said his testimony in the case would do nothing to affect that reputation.
“Marco Rubio has an impeccable reputation throughout his long time in public office,” said Groisman, the former mayor of Bal Harbour, a village in Miami-Dade County. “For those of us who know him, the fact that he’s testifying as a witness in the case is just that.”
Yet during opening arguments at Rivera’s trial on Monday, lawyers on both sides of the case repeatedly invoked Rubio’s name.
Roger Cruz, a federal prosecutor, tried to paint Rubio as key to what Rivera could offer foreign government leaders like Maduro.
He and his firm “offered access to United States politicians that they spent decades establishing relationships with, such as then-U.S. Senator Marco Rubio,” Cruz said. That was especially true because the two shared a Cuban American background: “They hit it off as young men.”
He said that Rivera and other participants in a WhatsApp chat central to the allegations referred to him as either “el Cubanito” — the Little Cuban — or “Miss Clairol,” a reference to the hair-dye brand and the blond hair color to which Rubio’s name translates in Spanish.
Shohat, Rivera’s defense attorney, said it was precisely his client’s relationship with Rubio — “a staunch opponent of communism” — that proved why Rivera could have never worked for Maduro, a socialist strongman.
“Does the [Venezuelan] government think [Rivera and his allies] were so clever that they could pull the wool over Marco Rubio’s eyes and get him to help Nicolás Maduro?” Shohat asked the jury.
A lawyer for the other defendant, Miami political fundraiser Esther Nuhfer, displayed photos of Nuhfer and Rubio together in various office settings and again with their families at Nuhfer’s wedding.
Jeremy Roebuck in Washington contributed to this report.
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