A war is raging in the Middle East. Washington is in talks with Havana. The United States remains heavily involved in Venezuela.
But Secretary of State Marco Rubio had to set all that aside on Tuesday morning. He had been called as a witness in a federal corruption trial in Miami, where he spent several hours testifying against an old friend.
The highly unusual turn for a sitting cabinet member created a stir in downtown Miami as Mr. Rubio prepared to take the stand against David Rivera, a former Republican congressman. Mr. Rubio’s testimony drew heightened security at the courthouse and a gaggle of news reporters eager to catch a glimpse of the secretary of state.
Despite the fact that his longtime friend and former Tallahassee housemate was testifying against him, Mr. Rivera seemed upbeat before going into court on Tuesday. “Let’s party,” he told members of the news media.
Federal prosecutors have accused Mr. Rivera of secretly lobbying on behalf of the Venezuelan government in 2017 and 2018. At the time, Mr. Rubio was a Republican senator from Florida. He has not been implicated in any wrongdoing.
According to prosecutors, Venezuela’s state-run oil company secretly hired Mr. Rivera’s consulting firm for $50 million to lobby members of Congress and the White House for a thaw in U.S.-Venezuela relations. Mr. Rivera and an associate, Esther Nuhfer, were charged in 2022 with conspiracy, failure to register as foreign agents and other crimes.
Prosecutors say that Mr. Rivera split the contract earnings, which amounted to about $20 million, with Ms. Nuhfer and two people who were not charged in the grand jury indictment. Mr. Rivera and Ms. Nuhfer have pleaded not guilty.
Their defense lawyers have argued that they did not need to register as foreign agents because their contract was with an American company — the U.S. subsidiary of the Venezuelan state-run oil company — and not with Venezuela.
Mr. Rivera served in Congress from 2011 to 2013, after a number of years in the Florida House of Representatives with Mr. Rubio. The two men owned a house together in Tallahassee from 2005 to 2015.
Ms. Nuhfer is a political consultant whose firm has assisted in the campaigns of Mr. Rivera, Mr. Rubio and President Trump. She, too, was close with Mr. Rubio, one of her defense lawyers said in opening statements in the trial on Monday, noting that Mr. Rubio had attended her wedding.
But at least some of Mr. Rubio’s testimony on Tuesday was not helpful to his old friends.
He had no idea, he said, that Mr. Rivera had secured a $50 million contract with PDV USA, an American subsidiary of the Venezuelan state-run oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela. Had he known about the contract, Mr. Rubio testified, he would have acted differently in two meetings that he held with Mr. Rivera in Washington in 2017.
“I would not have taken any subsequent action on this matter,” Mr. Rubio told Harold E. Schimkat, an assistant U.S. attorney, during his direct examination. Had he known, Mr. Rubio added later, “it would have been shocking to me.”
His testimony lasted about three hours, including two cross-examinations. Mr. Rubio did not speak to reporters before or after his appearance.
Defense lawyers tried to show that their clients and Mr. Rubio were very friendly, arguing that their meetings had focused on how to achieve their shared goal of bringing democracy to Venezuela.
At one point, Mr. Rubio was asked if he was “familiar” with Nicolás Maduro, the former Venezuelan leader whom the U.S. military captured in January, an operation he helped orchestrate. He said that he was.
Prosecutors have argued that the Venezuelan government secretly hired Mr. Rivera and Ms. Nuhfer when Mr. Maduro was president to lobby for easing U.S. sanctions against the South American country. The defense has countered that, on the contrary, Mr. Rivera and Ms. Nuhfer were trying to find a way to push out Mr. Maduro.
On Tuesday, a lawyer for Mr. Rivera, Edward R. Shohat, cross-examined Mr. Rubio and presented him with a memoir that Mr. Rubio wrote in 2012, noting that Mr. Rubio had credited both the defendants in the acknowledgments.
Then Mr. Rubio jokingly asked if he should autograph the book. Mr. Shohat said he should. “Is that allowed?” Mr. Rubio asked the judge, before signing it.
The slow-moving case against Mr. Rivera and Ms. Nuhfer took more than three years to get to trial. It proceeded even after Mr. Trump returned to the White House last year and his attorney general, Pam Bondi, directed the Justice Department to limit enforcement of violations of foreign bribery and lobbying laws.
The trial was supposed to take place earlier this year. But in January, more than three years after the indictment, Judge Melissa Damian of the Federal District Court in Miami agreed to a final delay. American military forces had seized Mr. Maduro on charges of trafficking cocaine to the United States, and defense lawyers argued that it would be difficult to pick an impartial jury in South Florida in the weeks following his capture.
During opening statements on Monday, Roger Cruz, an assistant U.S. attorney, said Mr. Rivera and Ms. Nuhfer engaged in a “secret political influence campaign,” complete with code names in Spanish. They referred to Mr. Rubio as “el cubanito,” or the little Cuban, according to Mr. Cruz; Mr. Maduro was “el guagüero,” or the bus driver, and Mr. Trump was “el loco,” or the crazy one.
Ahead of the trial, defense lawyers tried to subpoena Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, because she had been a lobbyist for a Venezuelan tycoon involved in the case. But prosecutors successfully quashed the defense subpoena for her testimony.
Defense lawyers also wanted to call Mr. Maduro, who is being held in federal detention in New York, to testify. Through his lawyer, Mr. Maduro declined, saying that if called, he would invoke his constitutional right to remain silent.
Patricia Mazzei is the lead reporter for The Times in Miami, covering Florida and Puerto Rico.
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