In a landmark federal corruption case that stretches across U.S.-Venezuela diplomatic tensions, one-term former Republican U.S. Representative David Rivera of Florida has received a 10-year federal prison sentence after being convicted of two serious felonies: money laundering and acting as an undeclared foreign agent on behalf of the Nicolás Maduro regime.
The 61-year-old ex-lawmaker, who held his congressional seat from 2011 to 2013, was found guilty by a jury in May following a seven-week trial that laid bare a covert $50 million influence campaign orchestrated through his private consulting firm. Prosecutors laid out that the contract was issued by Citgo, the U.S.-based subsidiary of Venezuelan state-owned oil giant PDVSA, at the direct direction of Maduro’s government during 2017 and 2018, a period of extreme diplomatic friction between Washington and Caracas under the first Trump administration. At that time, the Trump administration had imposed sweeping economic sanctions on Venezuela in response to its authoritarian political shifts.
Court documents and trial testimony revealed Rivera and his co-defendant, long-time political consultant Esther Nuhfer, were contracted to lobby sitting members of Congress and senior White House officials to push for softer U.S. policy toward Venezuela. Among the targets of their lobbying efforts was Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was then serving as a U.S. Senator from Florida and had once shared a home with Rivera. Another high-profile target was former senior White House advisor Kellyanne Conway.
Both Rubio and Texas Congressman Pete Sessions testified during the trial that they had no knowledge of Rivera’s hidden ties to the Venezuelan government, and neither has been implicated in any wrongdoing. Defense attorneys for Rivera and Nuhfer mounted a case arguing that the pair did not have a legal obligation to register as foreign agents, because their lobbying contract was formally with Citgo, the U.S. subsidiary, rather than the Venezuelan government directly.
That argument failed to sway the court, however. At Friday’s sentencing hearing, U.S. District Judge Melissa Damian made clear that the origin of the funds was not in question, stating “There’s no dispute this money came from the Maduro regime.” In addition to the 10-year prison term, Rivera was ordered to forfeit all of his owned real estate properties in the state of Florida as part of his sentence. Nuhfer, who was also convicted alongside Rivera on the same charges, is scheduled to receive her sentence at a later date. The case marks one of the highest-profile convictions for undeclared foreign lobbying involving a former member of Congress in recent years.