March 24 (UPI) -- Secretary of State Marco Rubio is scheduled to testify Tuesday against his longtime friend who is facing charges of money laundering and acting as an unregistered foreign agent for Venezuela.
Prosecutors allege that between 2017 and 2018, David Rivera and Esther Nuhfer, Rivera's former business partner, lobbied U.S. officials -- including Rubio -- on behalf of former president Nicolás Maduro's government to reestablish diplomatic relations between the United States and Venezuela.
At the time, relations between the countries were hostile. President Donald Trump had begun sanctions against Maduro. In early January 2026, the United States captured Maduro and his wife, brought them to New York and charged them with drug trafficking.
Rubio and Rivera became friends as campaign volunteers in Miami in the 1990s, and both became young state legislators. They bought a house together in Tallahassee and eventually got elected to the House of Representatives.
The indictment said that Rivera, 60, and Nuhfer, 51, acted as foreign agents without registering with the Department of Justice, which violates the Foreign Agents Registration Act. It also accuses them of laundering money to conceal his criminal conduct.
