MIAMI — Secretary of State Marco Rubio is testifying Tuesday over his interactions with former Miami congressman David Rivera nearly a decade ago, when his longtime friend was accused of secretly lobbying on behalf of Venezuela’s government.
Rivera and an associate were charged in 2022 with money laundering and failing to register as a foreign agent after being awarded a $50 million lobbying contract from Nicolás Maduro’s government. Rivera denies wrongdoing.
As part of his work, Rivera and his co-defendant are accused of trying to arrange meetings for then-Foreign Minister Delcy Rodríguez — now Venezuela’s acting president — in Dallas, New York, Washington and Caracas, Venezuela, with White House officials, members of Congress and the chief executive officer of Exxon Mobil.
Rubio, testifying in a packed federal courtroom in Miami with heightened security, said he and Rivera became “very close” when both overlapped for six years as members of the Florida Legislature in the early 2000s. They stayed close when they went to Washington at the same time — Rubio elected to the Senate, Rivera to the House — and shared friends and family gatherings.
In July 2017, Rubio said he got a call from Rivera saying he needed to see him urgently to discuss Venezuela. The next morning, a Sunday, Rivera traveled to Washington and at a meeting at his home said he was working with Raul Gorrin, a media magnate in Venezuela who was Rivera’s main conduit to the Maduro government, on a plan to persuade Maduro to step aside.
“I was skeptical,” said Rubio during his testimony, adding that the Maduro government was full of “double dealers” who were constantly pitching plans to betray Maduro.
“But if there was a 1% chance it was real, and I had a role to play alerting the White House, I was open to doing that,” he added.
Within days, borrowing talking points provided by Rivera, Rubio wrote and delivered a speech on the Senate floor signaling the U.S. would not retaliate against Venezuelan government insiders who worked to push Maduro from power.
“He provided me with insight into some of the key phrases that regime insiders would’ve wanted to hear to know this was serious,” Rubio testified. “No vengeance, no retribution.”
Rubio’s testimony is highly unusual. Not since Labor Secretary Raymond Donovan testified at a Mafia trial in 1983 has a sitting member of the president’s Cabinet taken the stand in a criminal trial. In the indictment against Rivera, there’s no indication that Rubio acted improperly as a senator at the time.
Prosecutors say that the purpose of the lobbying contract was to persuade the first Trump administration to normalize relations with Maduro’s government — a seemingly futile undertaking during the first Trump administration but one now within reach, albeit on unequal terms, following Maduro’s ouster and the ascent of his more pragmatic aide.
To cloak their activities, prosecutors said, the co-defendants and others set up a chat group called MIA — for Miami — in which they used Spanish-language code words like “Little Cuban” for Rubio, “The Lady in Red” for Rodríguez and “melons” for millions of dollars.
“This case is about two things: greed and betrayal,” prosecutor Roger Cruz said in his opening statement Monday. “The evidence will show that for $50 million these two defendants made a pact to secretly lobby for Nicolás Maduro” as well as for Rodríguez.
Rivera, 60, counters that his one-man firm, Interamerican Consulting, was hired by an American subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company — not the company itself — and therefore did not need to register as a foreign agent.
His three-month contract, his attorney says, was focused exclusively on luring Exxon back to Venezuela — commercial work that is generally exempt from the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
Separate and wholly distinct from that consulting work were his efforts with the Venezuelan opposition to pave the way for Maduro’s exit, Rivera’s defense said.
“The government’s theory is utterly preposterous,” defense attorney Ed Shohat said during his opening statement Monday, describing Rivera as a “freedom fighter” and “ardent opponent of communism wherever it rears its ugly head.”
Goodman writes for the Associated Press.
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