{"id":30751,"date":"2026-05-03T06:12:34","date_gmt":"2026-05-03T10:12:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=30751"},"modified":"2026-05-03T06:12:34","modified_gmt":"2026-05-03T10:12:34","slug":"jury-convicts-former-florida-congressman-david-rivera-in-venezuela-lobbying-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2026\/05\/03\/jury-convicts-former-florida-congressman-david-rivera-in-venezuela-lobbying-case\/","title":{"rendered":"Jury convicts former Florida congressman David Rivera in Venezuela lobbying case"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A jury on Friday found former Florida Congressman David Rivera guilty of conspiracy, failing to register as a foreign agent and other crimes related to lobbying US officials on behalf of the Venezuelan government.<\/b><\/p>\n

Prosecutors said Venezuela’s state-run oil company hired Rivera’s consulting firm for a $50m (\u00a337m) fee to lobby members of Congress to help improve US relations with Venezuela.<\/p>\n

The six-week trial saw testimony from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a friend of Rivera’s, as well as Texas Congressman Pete Sessions, both of whom said they had no idea of Rivera’s lobbying.<\/p>\n

Defence lawyers had said the lobbying was for a US subsidiary of the oil company, not the Venezuelan government.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Rivera, who served in Congress from 2011 to 2013, was ordered to be detained after prosecutors argued he posed a flight risk. He showed little emotion when the verdict was read, according to US media outlets.<\/p>\n

Jurors also convicted Rivera’s associate, political consultant Esther Nuhfer.<\/p>\n

Federal prosecutors in Florida said Rivera and Nuhfer engaged in a “secret political influence campaign”, receiving a $50m contract for three months of work on behalf of a US-based subsidiary of Venezuelan state oil firm PDVSA, which is also known as Citgo.<\/p>\n

“As long as the money kept coming in, they didn’t care from where,” prosecutor Roger Cruz said of the defendants during closing arguments.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors alleged that, in 2017 and 2018, at the behest of former Venezuelan President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro’s government, Rivera and Nuhfer attempted to lobby Rubio – then still a senator and former housemate of Rivera’s – as well as Kellyanne Conway, a prominent former White House advisor.<\/p>\n

The lobbying came as relations between the two countries were tense during President Donald Trump’s first administration, when he imposed sanctions on Venezuela.<\/p>\n

Defence lawyers for Rivera and Nuhfer argued that the pair did not need to register as foreign agents because their contract was with a US-based subsidiary of a Venezuelan state company.<\/p>\n

An attorney for Rivera also said that his client was actually focused on trying to oust Maduro rather than improve US-Venezuela ties.<\/p>\n

“He was working every possible angle to get Nicol\u00e1s Maduro out,” defence attorney Ed Shohat said during closing arguments, according to the Associated Press. “There was not a word in the chats about normalising relations.”<\/p>\n

In January, Trump launched a military strike in Venezuela leading to the capture of Maduro, who is awaiting trial alongside his wife in New York on drug-related charges.<\/p>\n

Rubio, who was not implicated in the wrongdoing, testified during the trial that he was close friends with Rivera but was unaware he was working as a lobbyist.<\/p>\n

“He’s someone I’ve known for a long time,” Rubio told CBS News, the BBC’s US partner, in an interview before the trial. “We’ve worked closely together but not on this, and there’s not a single person claiming otherwise.”<\/p>\n

Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A jury on Friday found former Florida Congressman David Rivera guilty of conspiracy, failing to register as a foreign agent and other crimes related to lobbying US officials on behalf of the Venezuelan government. Prosecutors […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30752,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[12502,417,12503,4466,1902],"class_list":{"0":"post-30751","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"category-usa","9":"tag-david-rivera","10":"tag-florida","11":"tag-lobbying","12":"tag-us-congress","13":"tag-venezuela","14":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30751"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30751\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30753,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30751\/revisions\/30753"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}