Secretary of State Marco Rubio is set to testify Tuesday in the federal criminal trial of his former roommate, ex-Miami congressman David Rivera, who faces an 11-count indictment alleging he secretly lobbied for Venezuela's government and laundered money while doing it. The trial opened Monday in Miami with dueling opening statements that laid bare two irreconcilable versions of what Rivera, now 60, was actually doing when he reached into his Republican rolodex on behalf of Nicolás Maduro's regime.
If Rubio takes the stand as expected, it will mark the first time a sitting Cabinet member has testified in a criminal trial since Labor Secretary Raymond Donovan appeared at a mafia trial in 1983. The State Department declined to comment.
Prosecutor Roger Cruz wasted no time framing the stakes for the 12-person jury.
This case is about two things: greed and betrayal.
Cruz told jurors that Rivera and his co-defendant, Miami political consultant Esther Nuhfer, entered a secret pact to lobby for Maduro and his then foreign minister, Delcy Rodríguez, now Venezuela's acting president. The alleged price tag was staggering.
The evidence will show that for $50 million these two defendants made a pact to secretly lobby for Nicolás Maduro, the communist director, and his second in command Delcy Rodríguez.
The indictment, unsealed in 2022, charges both Rivera and Nuhfer with money laundering and failing to register as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, the federal law requiring anyone who lobbies in the U.S. on behalf of a foreign government to disclose that relationship publicly.
Prosecutors allege Rivera persuaded Rodríguez to award him a $50 million lobbying contract to be paid by PDVSA, Venezuela's state oil company. They say he then set up an encrypted chat group called "MIA" with Venezuelan media tycoon Raúl Gorrín, whom prosecutors identify as Rivera's main conduit to the Maduro government. Gorrín was subsequently charged in the U.S. with bribing top Venezuelan officials, according to prosecutors.
The alleged participants did not communicate in plain language, AP News reported. Prosecutors say members of the chat used code words: Maduro was the "bus driver," Texas Republican Rep. Pete Sessions was "Sombrero," Rodríguez was "The Lady in Red," and millions of dollars were "melons."
The indictment places Rivera and Rubio together at the senator's Washington home on July 9, 2017. According to the indictment, Rivera told Rubio he was working with Gorrín, who had persuaded Maduro to accept a deal in which he would hold free and fair elections. Two days later, as Rubio was set to meet with President Trump, Rivera texted Rubio: "Remember, U.S. should facilitate, not just support, a negotiated solution," and "No vengeance, reconciliation."
Following a second meeting between Rubio, Rivera, Gorrín, and others, Rivera remarked in the chat that Maduro would have to pay him for setting up the meeting with Rubio, according to the indictment. Without the senator's support, Rivera wrote, there would be "no turkey." At the same time, the indictment says, the group was trying to secure a meeting with White House aide Kellyanne Conway.
Prosecutors said at a pre-trial hearing last week that contact with Gorrín offered Rubio a backchannel to Caracas at a time when U.S. authorities had detected a possible death threat against the senator from Venezuelan socialist party boss Diosdado Cabello. That detail underscores the volatile environment around the alleged lobbying push. There is no indication in the indictment that Rubio acted improperly as a senator.
The alleged outreach collapsed later that month when Trump sanctioned Maduro and labeled him a "dictator," launching a maximum pressure campaign to remove him. On July 31, 2017, Rubio delivered a 10-minute address to the Venezuelan people that aired on Gorrín's network.
For Nicolás Maduro, who I am sure is watching, the current path you are on will not end well for you.
Prosecutors allege Rivera was aided by Rep. Pete Sessions and a convicted Cali cartel associate as he sought meetings with the White House and Exxon Mobil on Maduro's behalf. After the contract was signed, Rivera and Gorrín arranged a meeting in New York City between Rodríguez, who also served as a PDVSA board member, and Sessions, whose Dallas-area district included Exxon's headquarters.
Sessions then tried to broker a meeting for Rodríguez with Darren Woods, who had succeeded Trump's then Secretary of State Rex Tillerson as CEO of Exxon. Rodríguez was allegedly looking to resolve a long-running investment dispute and enlist Exxon in reviving Venezuela's collapsing oil industry. The meeting never happened. Exxon lawyers rebuffed the outreach.
Almost a year after that effort, the indictment says Sessions secretly traveled to Caracas for a meeting with Maduro arranged by Gorrín and Rivera. As part of the trip, the indictment says, Sessions agreed to deliver a letter from Maduro to Trump.
Defense attorney Ed Shohat delivered an opening statement that attacked the prosecution's theory at its foundation. His argument: nothing the government describes amounts to foreign lobbying, and nothing Rivera did changed a single policy outcome.
This is like a murder case without a murder, a drugs case without drugs, a kidnapping case without a kidnapping.
Shohat told the jury flatly: "Nothing happened." He added: "Not one single policy of the U.S. was impacted by this case."
Rivera's attorneys argue his one-man firm, Interamerican Consulting, was hired by an American subsidiary of Venezuela's state-owned oil company, not by PDVSA itself. The three-month, $50 million contract, the defense says, was focused exclusively on luring Exxon back to Venezuela. That type of commercial work, the defense contends, is generally exempt from FARA.
Shohat also insisted that Rivera's meetings with Rubio and others were wholly distinct from the consulting work and were tied to efforts Rivera undertook with Maduro's opponents to usher in leadership less hostile to the United States. He described Rivera as a "staunch freedom fighter" and ardent opponent of communism who would never do anything to benefit Maduro.
The government's theory is utterly preposterous.
The criminal trial is not the only legal front Rivera faces. Plaintiffs in a parallel civil case accuse him of doing little of the promised work and using the contract as cover for illegal lobbying. Of the roughly $20 million Rivera received, $3.75 million allegedly went to a South Florida company that maintained Gorrín's luxury yacht, according to those civil plaintiffs.
Rivera has a history of legal entanglements. He previously faced allegations of secretly funding a Democratic spoiler candidate in a 2012 congressional race. Last year, federal prosecutors dropped that case after an appeals court threw out a sizable fine imposed by a lower court. Rivera was also investigated, but never charged, for campaign finance violations and a $1 million contract with a gambling company while serving in the Florida legislature. He has denied any wrongdoing and said both investigations were politically motivated.
The defense team wanted both Maduro and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles to testify. Maduro, through a lawyer, said he would invoke his constitutional right to remain silent if compelled. Prosecutors successfully quashed the attempt to subpoena Wiles, who was a registered lobbyist for Gorrín's Globovision network at the same time Gorrín was allegedly working with Rivera.
Investigators and jurors will need to determine whether Rivera's contract was genuinely commercial or functioned as a covert channel for foreign influence. They will need to evaluate whether the encrypted chat, the code words, and the cash flows point to hidden lobbying or simply to the paranoia of men doing legitimate business in a dangerous political environment. The identity of the convicted Cali cartel associate prosecutors say aided Rivera has not been publicly confirmed. The specific money-laundering transactions beyond the yacht-maintenance payment have not been detailed publicly.
Before being elected to Congress in 2010, Rivera was a high-ranking Florida legislator who shared a Tallahassee home with Rubio, who eventually became Florida House speaker. That personal history is what makes Rubio's expected testimony Tuesday so significant and so unusual.
When a sitting Secretary of State walks into a federal courtroom to answer questions about his old roommate's alleged work for a hostile socialist regime, the country deserves a full accounting of what happened, who knew what, and whether the foreign-agent registration laws that exist to protect American sovereignty from covert foreign influence are actually being enforced with the seriousness they demand.
