Secretary of State Marco Rubio is set to testify in a corruption case centering on a Florida congressman accused of lobbying for the Venezuelan government.
“This case is about two things: greed and betrayal,” prosecutor Roger Cruz said in his opening statement, as reported by 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.”
Prosecutors claim that former Rep. David Rivera (R-FL) acted as an agent for former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and received a $50 million contract from then-Foreign Minister Delcy Rodríguez.
Rivera was once a roommate of Rubio’s. The U.S. Secretary of State has not been charged with any wrongdoing.
According to a 2024 news release from the Department of Justice, Rivera “carried out a scheme to provide consulting and lobbying services to sanctioned Venezuelan businessman Raul Gorrín, who was added to the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List (SDN List) on Jan. 8, 2019, by the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC),” between June 2019 through April 2020. Rivera sought to lobby government officials to have Gorrín removed from the SDN List.
Rivera’s defense attorney Ed Shohat said in his opening statement to the jury, “This is like a murder case without a murder, a drugs case without drugs, a kidnapping case without a kidnapping.”
“Nothing happened,” he added. “Not one single policy of the U.S. was impacted by this case.”
