Jury convicts former Florida congressman in Venezuela lobbying case

On Friday, a federal jury in Florida convicted former Congressman David Rivera of conspiracy, failing to register as a foreign agent, and related crimes for lobbying U.S. officials on behalf of Venezuela's state oil company PDVSA, which paid his consulting firm $50 million for three months of work in 2017–2018; his associate Esther Nuhfer was also convicted. Rivera, who served in Congress from 2011 to 2013, was ordered detained as a flight risk, and prosecutors alleged he and Nuhfer conducted a "secret political influence campaign" targeting then-Senator Marco Rubio and White House advisor Kellyanne Conway at the direction of the Maduro government during the Trump administration's sanctions period.