Rubio Returns To Miami To Testify In Venezuela Lobbying Trial

MIAMI — Tensions and conflict are brewing in Venezuela, Iran and Cuba. But on Tuesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio found himself far from the international conflicts and in a Miami courtroom.

Rubio was in Florida this week testifying in a federal criminal trial involving ex-GOP Rep. David Rivera, a former colleague and longtime friend who has been accused of money laundering and secretly lobbying for Venezuela’s government.

Rivera, who has known Rubio since the mid-1990s, has created political difficulties for his friend over the years. And the trial is occurring during a crucial geopolitical moment for Venezuela, as the U.S. is moving forward with criminal proceedings against socialist leader Nicolás Maduro and seeking to reshape the direction of the country’s oil sector.

At one point during his testimony Tuesday, Rubio said the discussions he and Rivera had about Venezuela’s future reflected his continued approach to the Latin American country.

“We are trying to prevent civil war and see if we can transition to a recovery phase there that leads to free and fair elections,” he testified.

Prosecutors allege Rivera’s firm received a $50 million consulting contract with a U.S. subsidiary of Venezuela’s state oil company to push the Trump administration to back off its hardline stance against the Latin American country.

Rubio testified he didn’t know about the alleged consulting contract. Most of his three-hour testimony centered on a plan they discussed to oust Maduro over two meetings in 2017. Rivera told Rubio he had insiders who’d convinced Maduro to step aside and hold an election. He also shared that wealthy Venezuelan businessman Raúl Gorrín wanted to meet with Rubio to give him a letter that was to go directly to President Donald Trump.

Rivera has pleaded not guilty in the case, saying he didn’t need to register as a foreign agent given that he was working for the U.S. subsidiary. His defense team sought to show Rivera and Rubio were close — both politically and personally — and that Rivera’s history demonstrated he was a staunch opponent of the socialist regime.

During his testimony, Rubio described Rivera as a “vociferous anti-communist voice” and “one of the leading voices against the Castro regime” in Cuba.

“It would have been shocking,” Rubio said of the allegation that Rivera might have worked for Maduro given who he thought his friend was.

Rubio testified that during the first meeting in 2017, Rivera showed him a bank account with millions of dollars that Rivera said Gorrín intended to use to support Venezuela’s opposition party. Rubio acknowledged he was skeptical of the arrangement at the time, explaining it wasn’t uncommon for insiders to falsely claim they could facilitate a transition of power. But he said he decided that if there was “even a 1 percent chance it was real,” then he wanted to be helpful to the White House.

After his meeting with Rivera, Rubio went to the Senate floor to deliver a speech about Venezuela — with Rivera providing certain “code words” over text message that Rubio should use to reassure members of the regime who were watching that a transfer of power would be peaceful and “not about retribution or revenge.” Encouraged by Rivera, Rubio did a second taping in Spanish for TV network Globóvision, which is owned by Gorrín.

“Ironically, these words are very much in line with what we are trying to achieve now in Venezuela,” Rubio said.

But Rubio additionally testified he never would have met with Rivera about Venezuela, nor given a Senate floor or TV speech, if he’d known about the alleged consulting contract. He additionally described the meeting he had with Gorrín as short and “a total waste of my time” because the wealthy businessman didn’t give him a letter for Trump. Instead, he spoke only about how dire the situation was in Venezuela.

After the meetings, Rubio testified the relationship between the U.S. and Venezuela became more frayed as Maduro pushed through elections of a new Constituent Assembly, which Rubio referred to as a “fake Congress.”

Rubio additionally faced questions about Rivera’s political consultant, Esther Nuhfer, who’d been a fundraiser for Rubio’s Senate operations and was friends with his wife. He testified Nuhfer didn’t speak during a meeting she attended with Rivera and that he knew her to be an outspoken critic of the communist and socialist regimes in Cuba and Venezuela.

Tuesday morning’s testimony doubled as a biography of sorts for Rubio, with the secretary of State laying out why — as a child of Cuban immigrants and former elected official for a community of Latin American immigrants — he personally and professionally had taken an interest in the Western Hemisphere throughout his career.

Rubio and Rivera shared a Tallahassee home when they were state legislators and were roommates for a short time in Washington. When Rivera was a member of Congress, he faced allegations over campaign finance issues and election meddling, which drew investigations but no criminal charges. Still, the friendship was widely viewed as a political liability for Rubio when he ran for president in 2016, with then-candidate Trump running attack ads about it.

Throughout Tuesday’s proceedings, Rubio looked either at evidence in front of him or at the attorneys questioning him. Only rarely did he briefly look in Rivera’s direction.

People sitting inside the packed courtroom erupted in laughter at some of Rubio’s responses, including when he said he had “two jobs” during questions establishing his biography for the jury. In one exchange about whether he had used the messaging platform WhatsApp, Rubio deadpanned with, “I prefer Signal” — a tacit reference to the first major scandal of the second Trump administration.

After Rubio was done answering questions, defense attorney Ed Shohat asked him to sign a copy of his 2012 memoir, “An American Son,” which he’d used in questioning to show how Rivera’s name appeared in the acknowledgments section.

“Is that allowed?” Rubio asked Judge Melissa Damian. “I don’t know,” Damian replied with a laugh, as Rubio picked up a pen to issue his signature.

Rivera’s defense team also wanted to call White House chief of staff Susie Wiles to testify in the case, given that she previously worked at the lobbying firm Ballard Partners when it represented Globóvision. But the magistrate judge on the case denied the request, citing her high-profile role.

Ahead of Rubio coming in for questioning on Tuesday morning, the lawyers also debated including certain photos of Rubio and Rivera that showed the Rubio children when they were very young. Damian, an appointee of President Joe Biden, joked that Rubio may actually want certain photos included because “he looks great.”