Marco Rubio Spent Hours Testifying About Getting Dragged Into Shadow Diplomacy With Venezuela

MIAMI — Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s three-hour testimony at a Florida trial on Tuesday was supposed to elucidate his relationship with former Republican Rep. David Rivera, who is accused of striking a $50 million deal to engage in what federal prosecutors have called “a secret political influence campaign” from Venezuela.

But the trial’s second day took a sharp swerve off course, offering a rare view into the way lobbyists — registered or not — influence lawmakers, their public statements and even international diplomacy.

Rubio took time away from monitoring multiple burgeoning global crises to testify about how, in the summer of 2017, Rivera pitched to the then-senator a plan to undermine the Venezuelan regime.

An American presidential Cabinet official hasn’t testified in a criminal trial since 1983, when the Reagan administration’s labor secretary, Raymond Donovan, appeared at a Brooklyn mafia trial. Defense lawyer David Oscar Markus, who represents a second defendant and cross-examined Rubio on Tuesday, couldn’t help but note “just how surreal this is.”

Rubio claimed he knew nothing about the lucrative political consulting deal Rivera scored with a subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-owned oil-and-gas company — one that led to two meetings and a plan to have Rubio become a backchannel diplomat between Venezuelan officials and the first Trump White House.

“It would have been of interest to me because I would have known that he was representing an entity controlled by the Venezuelan government, and it certainly would have influenced my decision,” Rubio said. “I would not have taken any subsequent action on this matter.”

While Rubio is not accused of wrongdoing, the Department of Justice’s criminal case against Rivera portrays Rubio as an unwitting tool of an illegal lobbying campaign from Rivera, a career politician who knew he should have been transparent and registered as a lobbyist with the attorney general.

Rubio’s testimony on Tuesday centered on the way Rivera approached him when he was still on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Nicolás Maduro was on the cusp of consolidated dictatorial control by tearing up the nation’s constitution and replacing the nation’s legislature with a National Constituent Assembly, which, by default, was entirely dominated by socialists. Like leaders in many Western democratic nations, Rubio had publicly warned the Maduro regime against crossing this red line.

That was the backdrop to Rivera’s last-minute weekend request to privately meet with Rubio at a home in Washington, D.C. In texts to Rubio from South Florida, Rivera said he would wake up at 3:30 a.m. to make a flight on Sunday because there was a pressing matter that couldn’t wait until Rubio would be back in Miami on that Monday.

This wasn’t just anyone’s request for a U.S. senator’s time: Rivera was a longtime friend. The two had met while working on Bob Dole’s campaign for president in 1995, came from the same Cuban American community in South Florida, bought a house in Tallahassee together, became Republican state legislators around the same time, and arrived on Capitol Hill together when Rubio was elected to the Senate and Rivera was elected to the House. Rivera had left politics mired in scandal in 2013, but they remained in touch.

At the meeting, Rivera opened his laptop and showed Rubio the contents of a Chase bank account containing what Rubio remembered as “millions” of dollars apparently put together to support the Venezuelan opposition — supposedly from Raúl Gorrín, a corrupt Venezuelan businessman now wanted by U.S. law enforcement.

“David said that there were insiders in the regime in Venezuela” who struck a deal with Maduro to step aside, Rubio recalled in court. That news would sound shocking except that, Rubio noted, American officials had long been hearing about ridiculous schemes and nonexistent entreaties.

“The Venezuela file had a bunch of people who were always going around claiming, pretending to put some deal together,” Rubio recalled. “I was skeptical that it was true.”

But then Rivera had a specific request: Would the senator be willing to hand-deliver a letter from Gorrín to the Trump White House?

“I offered to have it handed to an intermediary,” Rubio said, but Rivera insisted Rubio do it himself.

“I felt if there was such a letter, I’d be willing to pass it along to the White House,” the secretary of state said Tuesday, recalling that he “briefly spoke to the president” and told Donald Trump “there might be something happening in Venezuela.”

Rubio began writing a speech — without any staffer’s help, by his recollection — that would “signal regime insiders” using what he called “phraseology” directly borrowed from his meeting with Rivera.

“He certainly provided me insight into key phrases that regime insiders would want to hear,” Rubio recalled. “It was signaling there was still time for a peaceful transition of power. … Insiders who were scared to cut a deal would know this was not about retribution or revenge.”

Two days later, on July 11, 2017, Rubio prepared to deliver the speech on the Senate floor.

“Every power broker in Venezuela including opposition leaders, military generals and Maduro himself r going to b watching,” Rivera texted him.

Rubio texted his pal a “5 minute warning” at 5:14 p.m.

“Roger that. Good luck!” Rivera responded.

Rubio ultimately delivered his speech, saying, “My hope is that patriots in Venezuela no matter what side of this debate they’ve been up to this point realize that the time is come to step up and further this process of reconciliation, not with the goal of vengeance or punishment, but with the goal of freeing those who have been imprisoned unjustly, with the goal of having free and democratic elections, with the goal of living up to its constitutional principles, with the goals of restoring democracy to a great people and a great nation.”

Rubio in court said the letter they wanted delivered never materialized, a subsequent private meeting with Gorrín and Rivera at a D.C. hotel was a “total waste of my time,” and Maduro’s decision to replace the legislature obliterated any chance of bettering relations.

Defense lawyer Ed Shohat tried to downplay Rivera’s actions — and make them fall short of illegal lobbying — by getting Rubio to say that, as a senator, he still would have delivered the same kind of speech, regardless of what drove Rivera to meet him. But despite half a dozen attempts with variations of that question, Rubio held firm.

“I probably wouldn’t have done that had I known,” Rubio said. “I wouldn’t have given a speech, particularly that day, had I known this is truly as a result of a contract or agreement.”