Old Rubio confidante accused of acting as Venezuela agent can go to RNC, judge says

A federal judge is allowing beleaguered former U.S. Rep. David Rivera to travel to Wisconsin for the Republican National Convention. The question is: Does U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio want him there?

Rivera, who’s charged with acting as an unregistered foreign agent for Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro’s government, has a decades-long personal and political relationship with Rubio. The two men have known one another for decades, and even owned a home together in Tallahassee at one point. They served alongside one another in the Florida state House and Rivera won his U.S. House seat the same year Rubio was elected to the Senate.

But their paths have diverged wildly since then. Rivera lost reelection after a single term in Congress and went on to face a litany of legal troubles. Rubio, now in his third term in the U.S. Senate, is a top contender to serve as former President Donald Trump’s running mate.

The two men may find themselves in the same place again next week during the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where Trump will formally accept the GOP’s presidential nomination and name his vice presidential pick. Rivera, an elected convention delegate, was freed up to attend the convention after Magistrate Judge Edwin Torres granted his request to travel to Milwaukee.

Rivera declined to discuss the trip to Milwaukee on Friday. But his attorney made clear in a June motion that Rivera “enthusiastically and fully plans to attend” the convention.

A spokesperson for Rubio did not respond to The Miami Herald’s request for comment.

While Rubio is expected to attend the convention next week, it’s unclear whether he’ll have a speaking slot at the event. The Republican National Committee has yet to release a full speaker schedule for the convention.

Former U.S. Rep. Carlos Curbelo, a Miami Republican who served two terms representing a South Florida congressional district, said that Rivera’s presence at next week’s convention, while carrying little actual significance for Rubio, is still a “minor distraction” at what could be a triumphant moment in Rubio’s political career.

“It’s a distraction and it could create an awkward situation,” Curbelo said. “That’s been the case for a long time.”

The charges against Rivera center on his work as a consultant to help the U.S. subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, PDVSA, improve its blemished image in the United States. Federal prosecutors argue that Rivera was working to further Maduro’s interests without registering with the U.S. Justice Department as a foreign agent — an infraction that carries a sentence of up to five years in prison.

Rivera, however, argues that he was actually working for the Venezuelan oil company’s U.S. subsidiary, not directly for Maduro’s government, and didn’t violate any U.S. laws in doing so.

In addition to being accused of working as an unregistered foreign agent on behalf of Venezuela’s government, federal prosecutors also accused Rivera late last year of failing to report hundreds of thousands of dollars in income, and funneling some of that money through a political campaign account to himself.

Rivera has maintained that while he was lobbying for Venezuela’s U.S. oil subsidiary, he was working behind the scenes to weaken Maduro’s government. His consulting company’s contract with the Houston-based subsidiary, PDV USA, did not mention opposition work as part of the job.

As he awaits trial, Rivera’s ability to travel is limited. Under the conditions of his bond, his travel is restricted to the Atlanta, Orlando and Miami areas, as well as New York City.

In addition to his request to travel to Milwaukee for the Republican National Convention — which was granted on Monday — Rivera has also asked the court’s permission to travel to Mexico as a consultant for an educational institute and to Venezuela for work as a consultant for a candidate challenging Maduro in the country’s upcoming presidential election.

Esther Nuhfer, a political associate of Rivera who has also been charged in the case, was also granted permission to travel to the Republican convention.

While Rivera has largely been exiled from Rubio’s orbit, the former congressman’s legal troubles have, at times, raised questions about his relationship with Rubio, who was never accused of wrongdoing. In 2016, when Trump and Rubio sought the Republican presidential nod, Trump’s campaign unveiled an ad hitting Rubio’s friendship with Rivera. “Keep Marco and his friends out of the White House,” the ad warned.

Years later, when Rivera was charged in 2022 in the illegal lobbying case, for example, the indictment mentioned a 2017 meeting between Rivera and a U.S. senator. That senator was eventually acknowledged to be Rubio. At the time, Rubio’s office said that Rivera never told the senator that he was lobbying on behalf of the Venezuelan government.

(Miami Herald staff writer Jay Weaver contributed to this report.)