Texas Congressman Pete Sessions testified Monday that his former GOP colleague, ex-Miami-Dade Rep. David Rivera, enlisted him in 2017 to persuade Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to step down and hold democratic elections.

But the Republican lawmaker acknowledged he did not know at the time that Rivera’s consulting company had signed a $50 million contract that March with the U.S. subsidiary of Venezuela’s national oil company, which prosecutors say was controlled by Maduro’s government.

“That was not discussed,” Sessions, who was first elected to Congress in 1996, testified before the 12-person jury in Miami federal court.

“I did not ask, nor did they say anything,” he added.

Rivera, 60, and Miami-Dade political consultant Esther Nuhfer, 51, who worked with him on the highly lucrative consulting deal, are charged with conspiring against the United States while failing to register as foreign agents for the Venezuelan government. Rivera, known as a staunch anti-communist, came to know Sessions when he served in Congress between 2011 and 2013. Sessions crossed paths with Nuhfer through her fundraising activities four years later.

The trial, now in its fifth week, is expected to wrap up with closing arguments and jury deliberations this week.

Meeting with Delcy Rodriguez

Sessions testified he agreed to meet on April 2, 2017, in New York City with Rivera and then-Venezuelan Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez.

At their meeting, he said Rodriguez resisted the idea of regime change in Venezuela but urged him to consider bringing Exxon, the Dallas-based oil behemoth in his congressional district, back to the negotiating table with Venezuela. Exxon and Venezuela had a major legal battle after Maduro’s predecessor, the late President Hugo Chavez, seized the company’s assets in the South American country.

Sessions testified that he also met separately that day with Rivera, Nuhfer, Venezuelan political opposition leader Julio Borges and Orlando business consultant Bertica Cabrera Morris, a friend of his wife Karen, at the Manhattan apartment of wealthy Venezuelan businessman Raúl Gorrín.

The gatherings set the groundwork for Sessions to act as an “intermediary” between the U.S. government during the Trump administration and Maduro’s socialist regime.

“This was the beginning of those serious talks,” Sessions testified. “The plan was to engage the Maduro government to have them leave office and find the factors that would help (achieve) that. … The State Department felt that way and my colleagues felt that way.”

But Sessions testified that Exxon’s lawyers refused to negotiate directly with senior Venezuelan officials to resolve their legal dispute, which was going through arbitration in the International Court of Justice. Meanwhile, little progress was being made in the parallel effort to promote democratic elections in Venezuela, whose top officials, including Maduro, and Venezuela’a national oil company, PDVSA, were slapped with U.S. economic sanctions in July 2017.

As a result, Maduro and his foreign minister, Rodriguez, stopped paying Rivera’s company, Interamerican Consulting, through the American subsidiary, which operates as PDV USA, or Houston-based Citgo. In total, the Venezuelan government paid Rivera’s company, $20 million of its $50 million contract.

Rivera cut side deals with Nuhfer, Gorrín and Miami businessman Hugo Perera, who collaborated on helping Rivera land the original consulting contract, giving them about $13 million of his consulting fees. Rivera also paid Cabrera Morris $250,000.

Sessions, others meet with Maduro

Despite the setbacks, Rivera and Nuhfer continued to communicate with Sessions and arranged for the congressman to travel to Caracas to meet with Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, at a military compound near the presidential palace, on April 2, 2018. Sessions testified that Congress, the State Department and Trump administration were fully aware of his meeting with Venezuela’s president.

Rivera, Perera and others — excluding Nuhfer — flew to Caracas in Gorrín’s private jet from South Florida. Sessions made the trip on a commercial flight.

Sessions said he and Maduro discussed holding democratic elections, freeing political prisoners, and allowing the president and his family to move to a “safe haven” after he left power. He said Maduro expressed interest in the plan.

Asked by defense attorney Ed Shohat whether any “normalizing relations” with Maduro entailed keeping him in power, Sessions said: “No.”

“Are you absolutely sure?” Shohat asked.

“Absolutely,” Sessions responded.

The following day, Sessions testified that he met with Venezuelan opposition leader Henry Ramos Allup and with U.S. Embassy officials at Gorrín.’s palatial estate in Caracas. (The No. 2 embassy official, Brian Naranjo, testified at Rivera’s trial that he saw Sessions’ visit as a “back-channel” mission that would come to nothing, and he described Allup and Gorrín as “corrupt.”)

After the trip, Maduro and Sessions exchanged letters. On April 13, 2018, Sessions wrote that he shared “issues of mutual concern between the United States and Venezuela” with incoming Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and planned to discuss them with President Trump and National Security Advisor John Bolton.

“I appreciate your goodwill and will continue to work in good-faith toward a resolution,” Sessions wrote, ending with a handwritten note, “My best to your family!”

But, ultimately, Maduro did not agree to any of the U.S. demands in exchange for his exit.

Rubio meetings in D.C.

The previous year, Rivera and others met twice with then-Florida Sen. Marco Rubio in Washington, court records show.

In the first meeting, Rivera and Rubio met at the senator’s residence in Washington on July 9, 2017. They discussed how Gorrín could broker Maduro’s exit. Rivera and Rubio were longtime allies, having been roommates when they served in the Florida Legislature. Rubio was the speaker of the Florida House from 2006 to 2008.

A few days later, on July 12, 2017, Rubio met with Rivera, Nuhfer, Gorrín and others at the Marriott Hotel off Connecticut Avenue in Washington rather than Rubio’s office because he didn’t trust Gorrín.

Rubio testified during Rivera’s trial that he thought the meeting was going to be about Gorrín’s role to obtain a letter from Maduro indicating his willingness to hold democratic elections in Venezuela. But Gorrín spent the meeting talking about how life was bad in Venezuela.

Rubio — like Sessions — testified during the trial that he had no idea Rivera had secured the highly profitable agreement with PDV USA when he met with him.

In late 2018, Gorrín was charged with foreign corruption and money laundering in federal court in South Florida. He was also charged in another foreign corruption case in the same court in late 2024. He’s considered a fugitive wanted by U.S. authorities.

Also in late 2024, Rivera was charged again with secretly working as an unregistered foreign agent in the United States — this time in Washington, for trying to lobby a Trump administration official between 2019 and 2020 on behalf of Gorrín. Authorities say Gorrín paid Rivera $5.5 million while trying to get himself removed from a federal government sanctions list.

In early January, U.S. military forces seized Maduro and his wife from a compound in Caracas and brought them to the United States to face drug-trafficking charges in New York.

Maduro was replaced by Rodriguez, the former vice president. As Venezuela’s foreign minister in 2017, prosecutors say, Rodriguez had ordered the U.S. subsidiary of the country’s national oil company, PDV USA, to sign the $50 million contract with Rivera’s consulting company in Miami.

Prosecutors Harold Schimkat and Roger Cruz say Rivera and Nuhfer used that contract as a cover to “normalize” relations between Venezuela and the United States.

The defendants’ lawyers say Rivera and Nuhfer were not required to register as foreign agents because they were working for the U.S. subsidiary of Venezuela’s national oil company — not Maduro’s government.

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