Ex-Miami congressman convicted in secret Venezuela foreign lobbying case

Summary

A federal jury convicted former Miami Congressman David Rivera and associate Esther Nuhfer in connection with what prosecutors described as a secret $50 million lobbying effort on behalf of Venezuela during the first Trump administration.

The AP reported that the jury found Republican Rivera and Nuhfer guilty on all counts, including charges tied to failing to register as foreign agents with the U.S. Department of Justice and conspiracy to commit money laundering as part of their work for former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s government.

Prosecutors said the seven-week trial provided a view of how Miami has functioned as a crossroads for foreign influence campaigns aimed at shaping U.S. policy toward Latin America, particularly through networks involving people with U.S. political ties.

After the verdict, Judge Melissa Damian ordered Rivera taken into custody. The judge said he posed a flight risk because he has access to sizable funds, faces a potentially long prison sentence, and has additional federal charges in Washington, D.C., tied to a related foreign lobbying case.

U.S. Attorney Jason A. Reding Quiñones said, “These convictions expose a simple truth: the defendants sold access and influence to a hostile foreign regime for money,” adding that in South Florida—where many families fled communist oppression—“that kind of betrayal carries real weight.”

Defense attorneys said they would appeal. Ed Shohat said during closing arguments that Rivera was “working every possible angle to get Nicolás Maduro out,” and that “There was not a word in the chats about normalizing relations.” David Oscar Markus compared the government’s case to “the 17th century Salem witch trials,” arguing that the prosecution had presumed ill intent from what he characterized as weak evidence.

The government’s theory, laid out in an indictment unsealed in 2022, was that Rivera was tapped by then-foreign minister Delcy Rodríguez—who is now Venezuela’s acting president—to use Rivera’s Republican connections from his time in Congress to influence whether the first Trump administration would abandon what prosecutors described as a hard-line stance and ease crippling sanctions on Venezuela.

Prosecutors said Rivera and Nuhfer tried to advance that goal as part of a “charm offensive” that manipulated influential friends, including Rubio and Pete Sessions, and that they described their contacts using a coded messaging system. In closing arguments, prosecutor Roger Cruz told the jury that as long as “the money kept coming in, they didn’t care from where,” and Cruz said prosecutors had shown a “massive secret” that the defendants withheld because disclosure would have harmed Rivera’s political career as an anti-communist stalwart.

To conceal their lobbying work, prosecutors said Rivera set up an encrypted chat group called MIA, for Miami, using Venezuelan media tycoon Raúl Gorrín as a conduit to Maduro’s government. Prosecutors said messages presented to the jury used code words such as calling Maduro the “bus driver,” Sessions “Sombrero,” Rodríguez “The Lady in Red,” and describing millions of dollars as “melons.”

Rivera and Nuhfer’s attorneys maintained that they acted in good faith and believed their work was not subject to foreign-agent disclosure requirements. They argued that a three-month, $50 million contract with Rivera’s one-man consulting firm was focused on luring ExxonMobil back to Venezuela and that it involved commercial work generally exempt from the Foreign Agents Registration Act, and they said that separate meetings with Rubio and Sessions came only after the consulting contract ended and were aimed at helping usher in Venezuelan leadership that would be less hostile to the U.S.

Prosecutors said Rivera used the contract with New York-based PDV USA as cover for illegal lobbying. They said that once the activity was exposed, the partners tried to hide it by backdating documents and creating what prosecutors called sham agreements, including one presented as justification for a $3.75 million wire transfer to a South Florida company that maintained Gorrín’s luxury yacht.

The prosecution also said the political activity included arranging meetings for Rodríguez in New York, Caracas, Washington and Dallas and that Sessions later tried to broker a meeting for Rodríguez with Exxon Mobil’s chief executive that succeeded Trump’s former secretary of state, Rex Tillerson. Prosecutors said that after a secret meeting in Caracas with Maduro, Sessions agreed to deliver a letter from the Venezuelan president to Trump, and that the effort unraveled after Trump sanctioned Maduro and labeled him a “dictator,” launching what prosecutors described as a “maximum pressure” campaign.

The AP reported that nearly a decade later, Rodríguez has emerged as the second Trump administration’s trusted partner following the U.S. military’s ousting of Maduro. The report also said Rivera previously faced other controversy, including allegations that he secretly funded a Democratic spoiler candidate in a 2012 congressional race, and that federal prosecutors dropped a separate case last year after an appeals court threw out a sizable fine imposed by a lower court.

No matter how the defense characterizes the intent, the conviction leaves the court to proceed toward sentencing for Rivera and Nuhfer, with their attorneys indicating they would challenge the outcome on appeal.