Former White House strategist says current situation at airports will help ‘really perfect ICE’s involvement in the 2026 midterm elections’
Secretary of state Marco Rubio is expected to testify on Tuesday in former congressman David Rivera’s criminal trial on charges of acting as an unregistered agent of ousted Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro’s government.
Rubio’s testimony will briefly take him out of Washington, where he has been engaged in high-level diplomacy around president Donald Trump’s war in Iran, and into the federal courthouse in downtown Miami, his hometown and where his political career began, Reuters reported.
Prosecutors say Rivera, who represented southern Florida in the House of Representatives from 2011 to 2013, lobbied politicians in 2017 to relax pressure on Maduro without disclosing that he was paid $20 million by a subsidiary of a Venezuelan state-owned company, a violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
Among the politicians both prosecutors and Rivera’s defense lawyers say he met with at the time was Rubio, his onetime roommate and then a senator for Florida.
