NBC6 South Florida <\/a><\/p>\nIn an\u00a011-count indictment unsealed in 2022, prosecutors alleged that Rivera was tapped by then Foreign Minister Delcy Rodr\u00edguez \u2014 now Venezuela\u2019s acting president \u2014 to work Republican connections from Rivera’s time in Congress to get the first Trump administration to abandon its hard-line stance and ease crippling sanctions on Venezuela.<\/p>\n
As part of the charm offensive, Rivera and Nuhfer sought to manipulate influential friends, including Rubio and Rep. Pete Sessions of Texas. Their goal was to normalize relations with the new Trump administration even as the Maduro government faced sanctions over serious accusations of human rights violations.<\/p>\n
But Rivera and Nuhfer didn\u2019t disclose their lobbying work as required, for fear it would have ended Rivera\u2019s political career as an anti-communist stalwart, prosecutors argued at trial.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe United States and the public were the true victims of this fraud,\u201d Assistant U.S. Attorney Roger Cruz said in urging a stiff sentence. \u201cHe used his position of trust \u2014 and betrayed it consistently and repeatedly.\u201d<\/p>\n
To hide his work, prosecutors allege, Rivera also set up an encrypted chat group called MIA \u2014 for Miami \u2014 with his main conduit to the Maduro government: Venezuelan media tycoon Ra\u00fal Gorr\u00edn, who was subsequently charged in the U.S. with bribing top Venezuelan officials.<\/p>\n
Members of the group used playful code words to discuss their activities: Maduro was the \u201cbus driver,\u201d Sessions \u201cSombrero,\u201d Rodr\u00edguez \u201cThe Lady in Red,\u201d and their windfall payments \u201cLa Luz,\u201d Spanish for \u201cThe Light,\u201d according to copies of text messages presented to the jury. Rubio was known as \u201cMiss Clairol,\u201d because rubio means blond in Spanish.<\/p>\n
At Friday\u2019s sentencing, attorneys for Rivera repeated their trial argument that the former congressman believed he was under no requirement to disclose the work. The three-month, $50 million contract with Rivera\u2019s one-man consulting firm, they said, was focused on luring oil giant ExxonMobil back to Venezuela \u2014 commercial work that is generally exempt from the Foreign Agents Registration Act.<\/p>\n
\u201cDavid Rivera does not deserve to die in prison because he failed to file a FARA registration,\u201d defense attorney Ed Shohat said at Friday\u2019s hearing. \u201cIf he had filed that paper, that form, everything he did, including the $50 million contract, which totally distorted this case, is perfectly legal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wholly distinct from that consulting work, they say, were Rivera\u2019s meetings with Rubio and Sessions, which were focused on ushering in leadership in Venezuela that would be less hostile to the U.S. \u2013 not supporting Maduro in normalizing relations with the U.S.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s not one word in any chat, not one document, not one thing he did to help Nicol\u00e1s Maduro,\u201d said Shohat.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors said Rivera used the contract with the affiliate, New York-based PDV USA, as cover for illegal lobbying.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a classic money laundering case,\u201d the judge said Friday in rejecting Rivera\u2019s motion to lower the federal guidelines range.<\/p>\n
The partners tried to hide the work \u2014 backdating documents and coming up with sham agreements, like one to justify a wire transfer of $3.75 million to a South Florida company that maintained Gorr\u00edn\u2019s luxury yacht, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n
The political activity included setting up meetings for Rodr\u00edguez in New York, Caracas, Washington and Dallas. As part of the effort, Rivera roped in Sessions, who later tried to broker a meeting for Rodr\u00edguez with the ExxonMobil executive who took over as CEO when Rex Tillerson became Trump\u2019s first-term secretary of state. After a secret meeting in Caracas with Maduro, Sessions also agreed to deliver a letter from the Venezuelan president to Trump.<\/p>\n
The outreach quickly unraveled, however. Within six months of taking office, Trump sanctioned Maduro and labeled him a \u201cdictator,\u201d launching a \u201cmaximum pressure\u201d campaign to unseat the president.<\/p>\n
And now, nearly a decade later, Rodr\u00edguez has emerged as the second Trump administration\u2019s trusted partner after the U.S. military\u2019s ousting of Maduro.<\/p>\n
Before being elected to Congress in 2010, Rivera was a high-ranking Florida legislator and shared a Tallahassee home with Rubio, who eventually became the Florida House speaker.<\/p>\n
Rivera faced earlier controversy, including allegations that he secretly funded a Democratic spoiler candidate in a 2012 congressional race. Last year, federal prosecutors dropped that case after an appeals court threw out a sizable fine imposed by a lower court. Rivera was also investigated \u2014 but never charged \u2014 for alleged campaign finance violations and a $1 million contract with a gambling company while serving in the Florida Legislature.<\/p>\n
Despite all that, Rivera remains popular among Miami\u2019s Cuban American establishment.<\/p>\n
Friends of the former congressman, including the former president of Florida International University and Miami-Dade County\u2019s supervisor of elections, packed the courtroom to show their support.<\/p>\n
Sessions, in a letter seeking leniency that was read into the record by his chief of staff, said his former congressional colleague devoted decades to public service, much of it focused on defending liberty and democracy.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s productive for society by sending David away for a long, long time,\u201d testified Liliana Ros, a longtime Miami GOP committee member.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Miami congressman David Rivera was sentenced to 10 years in prison Friday in connection with a secret…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":418670,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[123,125,124,99],"class_list":["post-418669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=418669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418669\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/418670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}