MIAMI — After a high-profile seven-week federal trial that pulled back the curtain on hidden foreign influence operations targeting U.S. Latin America policy, former Republican U.S. Representative David Rivera has been found guilty on all charges connected to a covert $50 million lobbying campaign on behalf of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro government during the first Donald Trump presidential term.
Jurors delivered the guilty verdict Friday against Rivera, a decades-long close personal friend of U.S. Secretary of State (and former Florida U.S. Senator) Marco Rubio, and his co-defendant, political consultant Esther Nuhfer. All 11 counts against the pair, including conspiracy to commit money laundering and failing to register as agents of a foreign government with the U.S. Department of Justice, resulted in conviction. Rivera remained stoic and expressionless as the verdict was read, a demeanor he maintained throughout the entire course of the trial.
Though Rivera had been released on bond ahead of the verdict, U.S. District Judge Melissa Damian immediately ordered him to be taken into federal custody. Damian ruled Rivera qualifies as a substantial flight risk, citing his access to large unreported assets, the potential for a decades-long prison sentence, and additional pending federal foreign lobbying charges linked to this scheme that he already faces in Washington, D.C.
The trial, one of the few high-profile public proceedings to examine foreign influence operations centered in Miami, offered an unprecedented look at the city’s unique role as a hub for cross-border lobbying campaigns designed to shift U.S. policy toward Latin America. Miami’s large Venezuelan exile community, deep political connections to Washington, and concentration of regional power players have long made it a magnet for both anti-Communist advocacy and foreign corruption operations, a dynamic laid bare by the proceedings.
The case even drew testimony from top Washington political figures, including Rubio and Texas Congressman Pete Sessions, both of whom told jurors they had no idea Rivera held a secret consulting contract with PDV USA, the U.S.-based affiliate of Venezuela’s state-owned oil giant PDVSA. Both said they were shocked when the scheme came to light.
Prosecutors first unsealed the 11-count indictment against Rivera and Nuhfer in 2022. The case alleges that Venezuela’s then-Foreign Minister Delcy Rodríguez — who now serves as Venezuela’s acting president — personally tapped Rivera to leverage his Republican connections built during his time in Congress to convince the first Trump administration to drop its hardline opposition to Maduro and roll back crippling economic sanctions that had gutted Venezuela’s economy.
Prosecutors argued that the pair manipulated high-profile political contacts including Rubio and Sessions like “pawns on a chessboard” as part of the lobbying push, all to advance Maduro’s goal of normalizing relations with the Trump administration at a time when the Venezuelan government faced widespread global condemnation for gross human rights violations. In his closing arguments to the jury, lead prosecutor Roger Cruz emphasized that the defendants prioritized large payments over ethical or legal obligations, saying “As long as the money kept coming in, they didn’t care from where.”
Per prosecution arguments, Rivera and Nuhfer concealed their work to protect Rivera’s public image as a leading anti-Communist voice in Florida Republican politics; keeping the “massive secret” hidden was the only way to avoid ending his political career, prosecutors said. To hide communications from authorities, Rivera set up an encrypted chat group codenamed MIA (for Miami) with Raúl Gorrín, a Venezuelan media tycoon who served as the main liaison to the Maduro government and has since been charged by U.S. authorities with bribing senior Venezuelan officials. Chat members used coded language to obscure their activities: Maduro was referred to as the “bus driver,” Sessions as “Sombrero,” Rodríguez as “The Lady in Red,” and multi-million dollar payments were called “melons.” Prosecutors added that payments from the Maduro government were consistently referenced in chats using the Spanish word for light, “La Luz.”
The defense pushed back aggressively against the prosecution’s narrative. Attorneys for both defendants argued their clients acted in good faith and had no legal obligation to disclose the consulting contract, which they claimed focused exclusively on commercial efforts to convince oil major ExxonMobil to return to its operations in Venezuela. Commercial work of this nature is typically exempt from foreign agent registration requirements under U.S. law. The defense further contended that Rivera’s later meetings with Rubio and Sessions, which occurred after the consulting contract expired, were focused on promoting a transition to a new Venezuelan government less hostile to U.S. interests, rather than normalizing Maduro’s rule.
“He was working every possible angle to get Nicolás Maduro out,” defense lead attorney Ed Shohat said in closing arguments. “There was not a word in the chats about normalizing relations.” Nuhfer’s attorney, David Oscar Markus, drew a controversial comparison between the government’s case and the 17th-century Salem Witch Trials, arguing the prosecution presumed guilt on thin, insubstantial evidence that did not prove malicious intent. “My client does not have a dark heart,” Markus told the jury.
Prosecutors rejected the defense’s framing, arguing the ExxonMobil-focused contract was just a cover for illegal political lobbying on behalf of the Maduro government. Once the scheme began to unravel, prosecutors said, Rivera and Nuhfer fabricated documents, backdated agreements, and created sham contracts to hide the flow of illegal funds. One example presented to the jury was a fake agreement created to justify a $3.75 million wire transfer to a South Florida company that maintained Gorrín’s luxury yacht.
The political lobbying operation included arranging private meetings for Rodríguez across multiple U.S. and Latin American cities, including New York, Washington, Caracas and Dallas. The pair recruited Sessions to help broker a meeting between Rodríguez and ExxonMobil’s CEO, a position previously held by Trump’s first Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Sessions also agreed to carry a personal letter from Maduro to Trump after holding a secret meeting with the Venezuelan leader in Caracas.
The outreach effort ultimately collapsed within six months of Trump taking office. The Trump administration imposed sweeping sanctions on Maduro, labeled him a dictator, and launched a “maximum pressure” campaign aimed at forcing him from power. A decade later, however, Rodríguez has emerged as a key trusted partner for the second Trump administration following a U.S. military operation that ousted Maduro from power.
Before his election to Congress in 2010, Rivera built his political career as a senior Republican leader in the Florida state legislature, where he shared a home in Tallahassee with a young Marco Rubio, who later rose to become Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, a U.S. Senator, and most recently U.S. Secretary of State. Rivera has a long history of political controversy: in 2012, he was accused of secretly funding a Democratic spoiler candidate in his congressional re-election race, though federal prosecutors dropped the case last year after an appeals court struck down a large fine imposed by a lower court. He was also previously investigated for alleged campaign finance violations and a $1 million no-bid contract with a gambling company while serving in the Florida legislature, but never faced criminal charges in either case.