A federal judge in Miami sentenced former U.S. Rep. David Rivera to 10 years in prison Friday for running a secret, $50 million lobbying campaign on behalf of Venezuela's government, capping a case that pulled Secretary of State Marco Rubio onto the witness stand against his former housemate.
Rivera, 61, a Florida Republican who served in Congress from 2011 to 2013, was convicted in May alongside political consultant Esther Nuhfer on charges including conspiracy to commit money laundering and failing to register as a foreign agent. Prosecutors said the pair used a three-month, $50 million consulting contract with PDV USA — a U.S.-based affiliate of Venezuela's state oil company, also known as Citgo — as cover for a lobbying effort ordered by officials in Nicolás Maduro's government.
According to trial evidence, Rivera was recruited by then-Foreign Minister Delcy Rodríguez, now Venezuela's acting president, to use his Republican contacts to soften the first Trump administration's sanctions on Caracas. He and Nuhfer coordinated with Venezuelan media tycoon Raúl Gorrín through an encrypted chat group that used code names — Maduro was "bus driver," Rubio was "Miss Clairol" — and funneled part of the money through a sham payment to a company that serviced Gorrín's yacht, prosecutors said.
Rubio's testimony, and a judge's rebuke
Rivera had lobbied Rubio, then a senator, and Texas Rep. Pete Sessions, both of whom testified at the seven-week trial that they had no idea he was working for Caracas; Rubio has said he felt betrayed by his longtime friend. U.S. District Judge Melissa Damian rejected defense arguments for a lighter sentence, telling Rivera the case was "a classic money laundering case" and that "there's no dispute this money came from the Maduro regime."
The United States and the public were the true victims of this fraud. He used his position of trust — and betrayed it consistently and repeatedly.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Roger Cruz
Defense attorney Ed Shohat argued the contract was commercial work aimed at luring ExxonMobil back into Venezuela and was exempt from foreign-agent registration rules, telling the court that "if he had filed that paper, that form, everything he did ... is perfectly legal." Rivera, who must also forfeit his Florida properties, plans to appeal and has applied for a presidential pardon; he still faces separate federal foreign-lobbying charges pending in Washington.
Rivera remains popular within Miami's Cuban-American political establishment; supporters including a former Florida International University president and Miami-Dade's elections supervisor attended the sentencing, and Sessions submitted a letter urging leniency. Gorrín, the alleged middleman in the scheme, has separately been charged in the U.S. with bribing Venezuelan officials. Rodríguez, once the target of Rivera's backchannel outreach, has since emerged as a key contact for the current Trump administration following the U.S. military's ouster of Maduro earlier this year.
