Overview
- Secretary of State Marco Rubio took the stand Tuesday in Miami in the federal trial of former Rep. David Rivera, who is charged with acting as an unregistered agent for Venezuela and with money laundering.
- Prosecutors told jurors in Monday’s opening statements that Rivera and associate Esther Nuhfer used a $50 million consulting deal tied to CITGO to try to soften U.S. pressure on Nicolás Maduro by arranging access to Washington power players.
- The government says Rivera concealed the effort through an encrypted group chat called MIA and code names for key figures, while routing millions in payments, and that he never filed disclosures required by the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which is a transparency law for foreign political work.
- Rivera has pleaded not guilty and argues he worked for a U.S. subsidiary on commercial energy outreach and with Venezuelan opposition figures, so he did not have to register and did not change any U.S. policy.
- Witness lists include Rep. Pete Sessions, Kellyanne Conway and Otto Reich, and the trial unfolds after the January capture of Maduro and the rise of Delcy Rodríguez, adding geopolitical weight to a rare courtroom appearance by a sitting Cabinet member last seen in 1983.