Rubio testifies in former congressman’s Venezuela lobbying trial

MIAMI (AP) — 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.

On the stand, Rubio said he overlapped with Rivera for six years when they served in the Florida Legislature and that they were “very close” while in Tallahassee.

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.

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.

The purpose of the contract, according to prosecutors, 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.

“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.”

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.