Is David Rivera making a political comeback? He says yes, but he’s not on the ballot
Suggesting he could still be on the ballot after filing a last-minute bid for state House last week, former Congressman David Rivera said Tuesday he’s going to wait for a written decision from the state on whether he qualified for the Aug. 23 primary election.
“I’m going to let the lawyers in Tallahassee handle that,” Rivera told Radio Mambí’s Ninoska Pérez Castellón on Tuesday afternoon. “The state still hasn’t confirmed to me, but the paperwork has been handed over.”
Rivera filed his paperwork hours before the noon end of the qualifying period on June 17.
However, the state’s Division of Elections website labeled Rivera as the only candidate running for the West Miami-Dade state House District 119 who had not qualified to be on the ballot this year. A spokesperson for the Florida Department of State did not respond to a request for comment on Rivera’s standing.
Teasing a reemergence into public life, Rivera’s statements on Mambí were part of a wide-ranging hourlong interview, in which he vigorously denied allegations that he entered into a $50 million deal with the Venezuelan regime to clean the image of its state-run oil subsidiary in the U.S. during the administration of former President Donald Trump.
PDV USA legal fight
Rivera, who was recently ordered to pay $456,000 for breaking federal campaign finance laws in a separate case dating to 2012, has made few public comments in the past several years amid several civil and criminal probes.
He is embroiled in a federal lawsuit, his own countersuit and, sources have previously told the Herald, a federal investigation that delves into his dealings as an unregistered foreign agent to lobby for PDV USA, the U.S. subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-run oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela SA or PDVSA.
According to the lawsuit filed by PDV USA in 2020, the 2017 deal with Rivera’s Florida-based firm, Interamerican Consulting Inc., was worth $50 million, and it was struck to help improve the company’s image and reputation in the U.S. The company was then under control of Venezuela’s socialist President Nicolás Maduro.
PDV USA is a New York holding company that controls Citgo in Houston. Citgo cut ties with PDVSA in 2019 to comply with U.S. sanctions under the Trump administration.
During Tuesday’s interview, Rivera railed on the Herald’s reporting, saying that he never entered a deal with PDVSA and that he wanted to clear his name with South Florida residents, who he said he “hopes will judge me by my trajectory, by my record.”
“I’m going to unmask the lies of the Miami Herald in court, in my lawsuit,” Rivera said. “I decided to put forth my candidacy and I said, ‘Well, if I’m going to do this, I have to go publicly and explain everything we’ve talked about today.’ ”
He attacked one particular report in which the Miami Herald revealed that Rivera diverted about two-thirds of his $15 million income from PDV USA to three subcontractors in Miami. They allegedly provided “international strategic consulting services” for the Venezuelan firm and included a yacht company controlled by a wealthy Venezuelan businessman, Raúl Gorrín, who was later indicted on money-laundering charges in Miami. The other two were Esther Nuhfer, a former campaign aide and fundraiser in Miami-Dade who is close to Rivera, and Hugo Perera, a convicted cocaine trafficker in Miami who is now a developer.
Rivera blasts account of Venezuela ties
Rivera claims he refused to transfer his Citgo contract to PDVSA in Venezuela, which is what led to its being canceled.
“If the Herald can produce that contract between David Rivera and PDVSA — PDVSA, which is the one they keep writing about in all those articles! — I will move to Alaska without a problem. But that contract doesn’t exist, Nino, it’s a lie, it’s false, it’s slander, the contract does not exist,” Rivera said, raising his voice.
He also blasted U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., after the senator sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland asking why Rivera has not faced charges over allegations that he violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
“The American people deserve to know whether a former Republican member of Congress was secretly doing the bidding of a dictator responsible for committing crimes against humanity in Venezuela,” Menendez said in the letter.
Rivera called Menendez “ineffective, impotent, incompetent, totally useless.” He said instead that Menendez should be more like Florida U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, who he said was highly influential toward Trump’s policies on Venezuela and Cuba.
“Donald Trump would not take one step — not one step! — without consulting Marco Rubio, without getting his permission, the approval of Marco Rubio. He would not do anything about Cuba, nothing about Venezuela without first speaking with Marco Rubio. The person who headed Donald Trump’s policies toward Cuba and Donald Trump towards Venezuela was named Marco Rubio. That’s being an effective senator,” said Rivera.
Rubio, a staunch critic of the Maduro regime, is a close friend of Rivera’s. Asked about his current relationship with Rivera considering the allegations that have surfaced, Rubio told the Herald last month during a campaign event that they haven’t spoken in a “long time.”
“David was my friend for a long — I haven’t spoken to him for a very long time. You have to ask him those questions, it has nothing to do with me,” Rubio said.
El Nuevo Herald staff writer Antonio Maria Delgado and Miami Herald staff writer Jay Weaver contributed to this report.
This story was originally published June 21, 2022 at 7:53 PM.
