Republican former Florida Congressman David Rivera, who in 2017 signed a $50 million consulting contract with Venezuela’s socialist regime, was arrested Monday at an Atlanta airport in charges connected to an investigation into the country’s corrupt state-owned oil company, the AP reports.
Rivera, who served a single term from 2011 to 2013, was sued in 2020 by PDV USA, a Delaware-based affiliate of the Venezuelan oil giant Citgo, for allegedly not actually doing any of the “strategic consulting” work to curry favor with the Trump Regime for which he was paid upfront $20 million of the $50 million contract. The indictment against Rivera remains sealed, but that he never registered to perform lobbying work for a foreign entity is likely to be a factor. Last year Rivera was fined nearly half a million dollars by the FEC for meddling in the 2012 Democratic primary by funding a weaker Dem challenger to his 2010 opponent, Joe Garcia. It failed and Garcia won the rematch.