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 faced each other again in a very different setting: a federal courtroom. Rubio, now the secretary of state, testified as a witness against his onetime confidant, who is accused of serving as an unregistered foreign agent for Venezuela’s socialist government.
Rubio said that in July 2017 he met with Rivera, who presented a plan to usher out the country’s leadership. Rubio, a senator at the time, then gave a speech on the Senate floor calling for regime change in Venezuela.
“If in fact this was the case, [if] he was representing an entity controlled by the Venezuelan government, it most certainly would have influenced my decision” to meet with him, Rubio said. “I would not have taken any subsequent action on this matter.”
The extraordinary testimony marked the first time in more than four decades that a sitting Cabinet secretary has served as a witness in a criminal trial. Although U.S. administration officials regularly appear at hearings on Capitol Hill, there has been little precedent for them to testify before a federal jury.
Rubio’s role in the money-laundering trial spotlights his long-standing ties with Rivera, a scandal-plagued former congressman who has tried to leverage his ties on Capitol Hill — especially with Rubio — to lobby and cut deals in Washington. 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.
Rubio said that the second time Rivera set up a meeting — this time, with a Venezuelan telecommunications magnate — Rubio grew increasingly impatient with his longtime friend.
“It was more of the same. I was frankly angry and frustrated,” he testified. “Why would I waste my time with a stupid meeting?”
Federal prosecutors allege that Rivera had received a $50 million contract to lobby President Donald Trump’s first administration to soften its stance on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. 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.
Rivera says the contract was focused solely on convincing Exxon to execute a potentially lucrative return to that South American country. That type of consulting contract for business matters would not require him to register as a foreign agent, attorneys said.
Rubio, formerly a senior Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, testified in detail about his hard-line stance against Maduro’s strongman tactics and his desire for free and fair elections in Venezuela. In January, years after charges against Rivera were filed, U.S. military forces captured Maduro and brought him to New York to face trial on narco-terrorism charges.
Testifying about past dealings with Venezuela — including then-Foreign Minister Delcy Rodríguez, who is now the country’s acting president — was uncomfortable for Rubio, particularly while the United States is embroiled in several international conflicts.
“I’m sure he’d rather be in the Strait of Hormuz than here,” said Edward Shohat, Rivera’s defense attorney, referring to the waterway near Iran that has become a major energy choke point amid Trump’s war with Iran.
The State Department did not respond to a request for comment.
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 political races and facing a campaign-finance investigation from the Federal Election Commission. When Rubio ran for president in 2016 and Rivera attended a GOP debate, his campaign said Rivera’s role was as an audience member only.
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.”
Rubio is central to the case because of his presence in meetings with Rivera and others that prosecutors say were part of Rivera’s efforts to curry favor for Maduro with the Trump administration.
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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