Ex-GOP Rep. On Trial Over Venezuela Ties Faces Corruption Questions

He has always been corrupt and a fake anti-communist conservative. That’s why I ran against David Rivera for Congress as a conservative Republican outsider in 2010. It’s also why I don’t believe anything he says. And why you shouldn’t either.

The career Florida state politician, onetime mentor to Secretary of State Marco Rubio when they were both in the statehouse, onetime darling of the GOP, and failed one-term congressman, now on trial on federal charges, has always been corrupt.

But he only became radioactive to Republicans when the boatload of corruption accusations finally caught up with him soon after he was elected to Congress.

He also immediately lost that GOP seat to the equally corrupt Democrat, Joe Garcia, in 2012. And despite a couple of attempts, Rivera never succeeded in politics again.

During my 2010 campaign against him, we created “The Real David Rivera” website documenting the full extent of his corruption, from creating fake “ringer” candidates to syphon votes from competitors, to demanding payments to meet with him when he was chairman of the Florida House Budget Committee and could funnel millions in tax dollars to friends and donors.

Sadly, few in the state or national Republican power structure listened. Rivera even got massive support from a who’s who of GOP leaders in Washington for his congressional run.

But by 2015, his close associate, former girlfriend and co-conspirator, Ana Alliegro, after first fleeing from the FBI to communist Nicaragua, had pleaded guilty to charges of violating federal campaign finance laws, making illegal campaign contributions, a false statement and conspiracy to make a false statement in the case of the fake candidacy they created.

Rivera was initially ordered to pay a $456,000 fine in 2021 for that campaign finance scheme. However, an appeals court later vacated the fine and judgment in 2024.

But now Rivera, who spent his entire career faking being a staunch anti-communist conservative, is charged with 10 criminal counts including illegally lobbying U.S. officials to soften sanctions against Nicolás Maduro’s communist narco-dictatorship in Venezuela, tax crimes, and money laundering.

Federal prosecutors in Miami say Rivera was secretly paid $20 million in 2017 (out of a promised $50 million) by Venezuelan state-owned companies during Trump’s first term to try to improve U.S. ties with Venezuela but did not register as a foreign lobbyist as required by the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).

While few recall it now, Maduro made a concerted effort to court the Trump administration at the time. Trump’s tendency towards engagement with leaders like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un raised hopes in Caracas that Trump might do the same with his regime. Thankfully, Trump didn’t bite.

Prosecutors say they may call Rubio, a onetime housemate of Rivera’s, as a witness. Rubio’s testimony would be the first time, since Labor Secretary Raymond Donovan testified at a mafia trial in 1983, that a sitting member of the president’s Cabinet has taken the stand in a criminal trial.

Rivera’s lawyers have argued that prosecutors are wrong and that instead he was somehow actually working to help Venezuela’s opposition remove Maduro from power. But real anti-communist freedom fighters don’t charge communist regimes $50 million to represent them as part of an alleged transition to democracy deal.

In fact, Rivera was working with radical communist, and Maduro diehard, Venezuelan politician Delcy Rodriguez, then foreign minister, now the interim Venezuelan leader that President Trump has coerced into cooperating with the United States.

Rivera reportedly arranged for a meeting between Rodriguez and a U.S. congressman from Texas, and later he arranged a meeting between Venezuelan oligarch and media tycoon, Raul Gorrín, and then U.S. senator from Florida, Rubio. All with the intent to soften U.S. sanctions against the regime.

To compensate Rivera indirectly, Rodriguez directed U.S. oil refiner Citgo, a subsidiary of Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA, to sign a consulting contract with his company. The Citgo subsidiary then also donated $500,000 to Trump’s inaugural committee in 2017 just as Rivera began his consulting work.

But Rivera’s dirty foreign dealings go back a lot farther than Trump’s first term. In 2012, while Rivera was still in congress, Diario de las Americas posted a damning image of Rivera dining with Daniel Ortega Reyes, son of Nicaraguan dictator, Daniel Ortega Saavedra.

It was through the Ortega family that Rivera first contacted executives of PDVSA. Five years later, following the election of Trump, Rivera was back in Washington lobbying legislators as an obscenely well-paid consultant for PDVSA. It is also why his co-conspirator Alliegro fled there in 2013.

Rivera is a snake who has lied, bribed, and cajoled his way out of trouble many times before. Hopefully, this time the charges will stick, and Rivera will spend the next decade or two in federal prison.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.

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