Secretary of State Marco Rubio is expected to take the witness stand Tuesday in a Miami federal courtroom in the criminal trial of former Florida Representative David Rivera, who stands accused of secretly lobbying for the government of Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro in exchange for a $50 million contract from the state oil company PDVSA — a proceeding that will mark the first time in more than four decades that a sitting member of the president’s Cabinet has testified in a criminal trial, according to the Associated Press and CBS News.
The trial, which opened Monday in the Southern District of Florida with jury selection and opening statements, charges Rivera, 60, and his codefendant, political consultant Esther Nuhfer, 51, with conspiring against the United States by failing to register as foreign agents under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, as well as conspiracy to commit money laundering, according to Reuters. Rivera and Nuhfer have pleaded not guilty to all charges. The maximum sentence for the money laundering count alone is twenty years, according to CNN.
Federal prosecutors wasted no time establishing the gravity of their allegations. “This case is about two things: greed and betrayal,” Assistant United States Attorney Roger Cruz declared in his opening statement Monday, according to the Associated Press. “The evidence will show that for $50 million these two defendants made a pact to secretly lobby for Nicolás Maduro, the communist director, and his second-in-command Delcy Rodríguez.” Cruz told jurors that the defendants had sold access to American officials they had cultivated over decades of political work in Florida and Washington.
The case strikes at the heart of a question vital to the integrity of American governance: the penetration of the republic’s decision-making apparatus by agents of hostile foreign powers operating without disclosure. The Foreign Agents Registration Act, enacted in 1938, exists precisely to prevent the kind of covert influence campaign that prosecutors allege Rivera and Nuhfer conducted on behalf of a socialist government in Caracas that was, at the time, under intensifying American sanctions.
Rubio’s role in the proceedings is that of a prosecution witness, not a defendant. He is not named in the indictment, and there is no indication that he acted improperly in his capacity as a United States senator during the period in question, according to the Associated Press. Rubio asked to be called by the prosecution after learning that Rivera’s defense team planned to call him as a defense witness — a tactical maneuver to control the terms of his testimony, three sources told Axios. In an interview with CBS News Miami prior to Rivera’s indictment, Rubio stated plainly: “He’s someone I’ve known for a very long time. We’ve worked closely but not on this. And there’s not a single person claiming otherwise.”
The historical weight of the moment is considerable. Not since Labor Secretary Raymond Donovan testified at a mafia trial in 1983 has a sitting member of the president’s Cabinet taken the stand in a criminal trial, the Associated Press reported. The timing is particularly notable given Rubio’s central role in administering American foreign policy, including the administration’s diplomatic management of the war in Iran and the ongoing transition in Venezuela following Maduro’s removal, according to CBS News.
The allegations trace back to 2017, during the first Trump administration, when prosecutors say Rivera leveraged his Republican connections from his time in Congress to push the White House toward a softer posture on Venezuela’s socialist government. Rivera, who represented southern Florida in the House from 2011 to 2013, allegedly persuaded then-Foreign Minister Delcy Rodríguez to award him the $50 million lobbying contract, to be paid through CITGO, the Houston-based American subsidiary of PDVSA, according to the Associated Press and Reuters. Of the approximately $20 million Rivera ultimately received, $3.75 million went to a South Florida company that maintained the luxury yacht of Venezuelan media tycoon Raúl Gorrín, who served as Rivera’s primary conduit to the Maduro government and was subsequently charged in the United States with bribing top Venezuelan officials, the Associated Press reported.
To conceal the nature of their work, prosecutors allege, Rivera established an encrypted chat group called “MIA” — for Miami — with Gorrín and others. Members used coded language: Maduro was referred to as “the bus driver,” Texas Representative Pete Sessions as “Sombrero,” Rodríguez as “The Lady in Red,” and millions of dollars as “melons,” according to the Associated Press.
The scheme’s reach extended well beyond Rivera alone. Prosecutors say Rivera was aided by Sessions and a convicted Cali cartel associate as he sought meetings with the White House and ExxonMobil on Maduro’s behalf, according to the Associated Press. Rivera and Gorrín arranged a meeting in New York between Rodríguez and Sessions, whose Dallas-area district included Exxon’s headquarters. Sessions later attempted to broker a meeting between Rodríguez and Darren Woods, who had succeeded Rex Tillerson as Exxon’s chief executive, according to NBC News. Exxon’s lawyers rebuffed the outreach. Almost a year later, Sessions secretly traveled to Caracas for a meeting with Maduro arranged by Gorrín and Rivera and agreed to deliver a letter from the Venezuelan president to President Trump, the indictment alleges.
Rivera’s defense attorneys have mounted an aggressive counter-narrative. Attorney Edward Shohat told the jury in his opening statement Monday that Rivera’s one-man consulting firm, Interamerican Consulting, was hired by an American subsidiary of PDVSA — not by the Venezuelan state oil company itself — and therefore was not required to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, according to the Associated Press. The three-month contract, the defense contends, was focused exclusively on bringing ExxonMobil back to Venezuela, commercial work that is generally exempt from FARA. “This is like a murder case without a murder, a drugs case without drugs, a kidnapping case without a kidnapping,” Shohat told jurors, adding that “not one single policy” of the United States was affected by Rivera’s work, the Associated Press reported.
The prosecution’s case is further complicated — and enriched — by the geopolitical developments that have unfolded since the alleged lobbying campaign. Rodríguez, Rivera’s codefendant and the Venezuelan official who allegedly directed CITGO to sign the consulting contract, is now the acting president of Venezuela, having assumed power on January 5, 2026, after Maduro was captured by United States special forces in Operation Resolve on January 3 and transported to New York, where he now faces narco-terrorism conspiracy, drug trafficking, and weapons charges, according to CBS News and Reuters. Trump has praised Rodríguez since her assumption of power, CBS News reported. Maduro, through a lawyer, indicated he would invoke his right to remain silent if compelled to testify in the Rivera trial, according to the Associated Press.
The trial is expected to last several weeks, according to NewsNation, and the witness list extends well beyond Rubio. Other prominent figures expected to testify include Sessions, former White House adviser Kellyanne Conway, and former Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Otto Reich, according to CNN. A key government witness is expected to be Hugo Perera, a convicted drug trafficker who received approximately $5 million from Rivera for making introductions, the Miami Herald reported via the Daily Gazette. Rivera’s defense team also sought to subpoena White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, who was a registered lobbyist for Gorrín’s Globovisión television network at the same time the media tycoon was working with Rivera, but a judge ruled against it, the Associated Press reported.
The relationship between Rubio and Rivera is a long one, rooted in the crucible of Florida Republican politics. The two shared a home in Tallahassee when both served in the state legislature, and Rivera was a prominent supporter when Rubio rose to become Florida House Speaker. Leon County records show Rivera and Rubio purchased a house together in Tallahassee in 2005 for $135,000 and sold it a decade later for $117,000, according to CNN. Nuhfer, Rivera’s codefendant, was a past political adviser to both men, CBS News reported. Despite Rivera’s serial entanglements with federal and state investigations over the years, Rubio never publicly denounced his old friend, even as aides urged him to create distance, Axios reported.
For the American republic, the trial illuminates a persistent vulnerability: the capacity of foreign adversaries to recruit former officeholders as covert agents of influence, exploiting personal relationships and institutional access to undermine the integrity of American policy deliberations. That the alleged scheme ultimately failed — Trump escalated sanctions against Maduro in July 2017, labeling him a dictator and launching the “maximum pressure” campaign — does not diminish the seriousness of the threat. The Foreign Agents Registration Act exists not merely to punish completed acts of subversion but to ensure that every American official, when receiving counsel or entreaty, knows precisely on whose behalf the petitioner speaks.
The State Department declined to comment on Rubio’s testimony, according to the Associated Press and CBS News.