PPress carrie the AP feed, " Former GOP Rep. David Rivera sentenced to 10 years for secret Venezuela lobbying --The longtime friend of U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been jailed since being found guilty in May of failing to register as a foreign agent and conspiracy to commit money laundering".

 Link -

By JOSHUA GOODMAN

MIAMI (AP) — A former Republican congressman and longtime friend of Secretary of State Marco Rubio received a 10-year prison sentence on Friday for concealing a $50 million lobbying campaign on Venezuela’s behalf during the first Trump administration.

David Rivera of Miami has been jailed since his conviction in May for conspiracy to commit money laundering and failing to register as a foreign agent for the government of Nicolás Maduro.

Rivera, 61, appeared stone-faced as Judge Melissa Damian denounced him for betraying his life’s mission. His many friends in Miami would surely judge him harshly had the millions of dollars come from Cuba’s communist regime instead of its allies in Caracas, she said.

“Nobody would accept that’s ok and I don’t think this is different,” the judge said. “There’s no dispute this money came from the Maduro regime.”

The case offered a rare glimpse into foreign influence campaigns aimed at shaping U.S. policy toward Latin America, highlighting Miami’s reputation as a magnet for both anti-communist crusaders and corruption among its sizable exile population.

President Donald Trump’s secretary of state, Rep. Pete Sessions of Texas and a top Washington lobbyist all testified, saying Rivera had never mentioned his mammoth consulting contract with a U.S.-based affiliate of Venezuela’s state oil company, PDVSA.

Rivera was charged in 2022, during President Joe Biden’s administration. Charges of illegal foreign lobbying have plunged since Trump returned to the White House. Rivera’s lawyers have applied for a presidential pardon, and plan to appeal while also defending him against a related foreign lobbying case in Washington, D.C. Still pending is Damian’s ruling on the government’s request that Rivera forfeit $20 million in criminal proceeds.

Prosecutors described how Rivera worked GOP connections for Delcy Rodríguez

Rivera was tapped by Maduro’s Foreign Minister Delcy Rodríguez — now Venezuela’s acting president — to get the first Trump administration to normalize relations.

As part of the charm offensive, Rivera and a co-defendant, political consultant Esther Nuhfer, sought to manipulate influential friends, including Rubio and Sessions. But they didn’t disclose the lobbying as required, fearing it would ruin Rivera’s reputation as an anti-communist stalwart, prosecutors argued at trial. Nuhfer received a five-year sentence.

“The United States and the public were the true victims of this fraud,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Roger Cruz said. “He used his position of trust — and betrayed it consistently and repeatedly.”

Rivera denied being a two-faced grifter. In an emotional 20-minute address, he traced his life’s journey from a childhood without a father in an immigrant Miami neighborhood to the halls of Congress — always “fighting the good cause,” he said. Holding back tears, he begged for leniency, telling the judge that it was tantamount to a “death sentence” due to his age and lingering effects from a battle with prostate cancer.

Prosecutors said betrayal featured coded figures — ‘Sombrero’ and ‘Miss Clairol’

Trial evidence showed how Rivera set up an encrypted chat group called MIA — for Miami — with his main conduit to the Maduro government: Venezuelan media tycoon Raúl Gorrín, who was subsequently charged in the U.S. with bribing top Venezuelan officials.

Group members used playful code words: Maduro was the “bus driver,” Sessions “Sombrero,” Rodríguez “The Lady in Red,” and their windfall payments “La Luz,” Spanish for “The Light,” according to copies of text messages presented to the jury. Rubio was known as “Miss Clairol,” because rubio means blond in Spanish.

[...]

Rubio’s former housemate faced scandal before, but Cuban Americans support him

Before serving in Congress from 2011-2013, Rivera was a high-ranking Florida legislator and shared a Tallahassee home with Rubio, who eventually became the Florida House speaker.

Rivera faced earlier controversy, including allegations that he secretly funded a Democratic spoiler candidate in a 2012 congressional race — a case federal prosecutors eventually dropped after a sizable fine was thrown out on appeal. Rivera was also investigated — but never charged — for alleged campaign finance violations and a $1 million contract with a gambling company while serving in the Florida Legislature.

Despite all that, Rivera continues to have support among Miami’s Cuban American establishment and in circles of power beyond.

Friends of the former congressman, including the former president of Florida International University and Miami-Dade County’s supervisor of elections, packed the courtroom to show their support. Sessions also sent a letter seeking leniency, referring to his former congressional colleague as a devoted defender of democracy.

Crabgrass has not yet found any online link to court papers which might flesh out more. 

 

 

 

Pope Hegseth I

 https://upolitics.com/news/hegseth-creates-pentagon-office-of-religious-affairs-drawing-constitutional-concerns/

According to the memo, the office’s director will serve as principal adviser to Hegseth and his deputy on religious matters. The office will oversee the Armed Forces Chaplains Board, issue religious affairs policy on the secretary’s behalf and represent him in dealings with Congress, other federal agencies and civilian religious endorsing organizations.

It is also charged with securing funding and resources for chaplains and their training, chapel youth programs, faith-based homeschool support for military families, and contracts with faith-based outside groups. Each military department has 90 days to deliver an inventory of its unfunded and underfunded religious affairs requirements.

Details on the office’s leadership, staffing and budget have not been released.

The Pentagon said the office will not compel religious participation or favor any one faith, and that it will not diminish the rights of personnel of any belief or none. Chaplains will remain the primary providers of religious support, with the new office acting as their advocate at the department’s highest level.

Part of a broader overhaul

The move builds on a string of chaplaincy changes Hegseth has made this year. In March, he cut the number of officially recognized religious affiliation codes from more than 200 to 31 and ordered chaplains to replace rank insignia with symbols of their faith on combat and working uniforms. He also hosts monthly evangelical worship services at the Pentagon.

The initiative fits within a broader Trump administration effort to elevate religion in government, including the creation of a White House faith office and new religious freedom divisions across federal agencies.

Critics push back

Mikey Weinstein, founder and president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, told USA Today his organization condemns what he called Hegseth’s “unconstitutional actions,” arguing they violate the First Amendment’s bar on government establishment of religion and its protection of free exercise.

[...] The Freedom From Religion Foundation has also launched a Freedom of Information Act investigation into the office and is calling on Congress to examine its creation, authority and funding. The group said the inquiry will help determine whether legal action is warranted.

Hegseth, who frequently invokes his faith publicly, has said service members’ spiritual health is as important as their physical and mental health.

As necessary? As wise? As an affront to secular killing in war? As a pet Hegseth thing, and power play?

As bad as Trump is, . . . Trump seems less unhinged most times, but other times . . .

MJ has a look: 

On Wednesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the creation of a new entity within the Pentagon: the Office of Religious Affairs. The office, Hegseth promised the assembled troops in Quantico, Virginia, would “report straight to the top. No staff filters, no bureaucratic dilution, a direct line to the secretary.” Chaplains would “finally have an advocate at the highest levels.” What’s more, “policy and resources will serve the mission, not smother the mission.”  

A hallmark of Hegseth’s tenure at the Defense Department has been his muscular Christian religiosity. Earlier this year, he spearheaded an initiative to bring prayer services to the Pentagon. Shortly after the start of the Iran War, during one such event in March, Hegseth prayed for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.”

Hegseth’s own faith is relevant here: He is a member of a conservative denomination called the Communion of Reformed Evangelicals Churches (CREC) that explicitly advocates for Christians to exert their faith’s influence over the government. As I reported:

At a February Pentagon prayer service, the featured speaker was Doug Wilson, the Moscow, Idaho, pastor who founded CREC. Wilson, who has described his vision of “a network of nations bound together by a formal, public, civic acknowledgement of the lordship of Jesus Christ and the fundamental truth of the Apostles’ Creed,” has long argued in favor of Christian nationalism, and he has likened his fiefdom in Idaho—which includes a church, school, college, and publishing house—to a “working prototype” of what Christian nationalism could look like.

The new Office of Religious Affairs isn’t explicitly Christian; a memo (PDF) published yesterday specifies that “Nothing in this memorandum shall be construed to compel religious participation or to diminish the free exercise rights of any Service member, civilian employee, or family member of any faith or no faith.” Yet earlier this year, the Pentagon released a new list of 31 religions officially recognized by the US Department of Defense, drawn from the 200 that had previously been accepted. On the new list, 22 of the 31 groups were Christian. Atheists, pagans, and humanists, all on the original list, had vanished. 

Details about what exactly the Office of Religious Affairs will do have not yet been released, but yesterday’s memo offers a few clues. In addition to moving chaplains directly under the control of the new office and overseeing the groups that decide who can become a chaplain, the office also will “sponsor and oversee research, technology, and analytical tools to support and assess spiritual fitness, spiritual readiness, and spiritual resilience.” It doesn’t define those terms, but Hegseth’s track record speaks volumes. As I reported a few months back:

In his 2024 book, The War on Warriors, Hegseth writes that the Geneva Conventions are unfair because the United States and Europe are the only ones that follow them. Instead, “America should fight by its own rules,” he declares. The nation’s soldiers should be “the most overwhelmingly lethal as they can be.”

Hegseth also bemoans a defense force infected, he writes, with the “fucking scary” disease of progressivism, which “will not stop until trans-lesbian Black females run everything!” He warns, “Sometime soon, a real conflict will break out, and red-blooded American men will have to save their elite candy asses.” In July, Hegseth announced an initiative to screen troops for low testosterone and offer hormone replacement therapy to those found deficient.

Hegseth has also long been preoccupied by what he sees as a “spiritual battle” between secular and Christian culture. Shortly before he became Secretary of War, Hegseth appeared on CrossPolitic, a podcast owned and hosted by Gabe Rench, whose brother, Aaron, is a co-owner of Doug Wilson’s Canon Press. In the episode, Hegseth accused liberals of using “patriotism to untether us from timeless truth, from the Bible” and praised classical Christian schools for providing “a comprehensive worldview that prepares them for the battle to come, because we’re in a spiritual battle, and otherwise we’d be sending our kids in as fodder.”

[...] Notably, Wilson’s Canon Press publishes popular homeschool curricula. “Education is warfare,” the website says. “Canon curriculum is designed to help you raise faithful, dangerous Christian kids, one subject at a time.” 

Wacko Warfare brought on by the man with the Crusader's Cross tattooed over his heart. 

searh = women's role in wilson's Idaho church  --- JPR had an item in the return list:

Wilson is a self-described Christian nationalist who wants to repeal a woman's right to vote, has defended slavery and believes homosexuality should be a crime.

His beliefs are extreme, and not long ago they were considered fringe. But today, Wilson's teachings are entering the mainstream, according to religion and history scholars, including Kristin Kobes Du Mez, author of Jesus and John Wayne.

That's why Morning Edition's Leila Fadel sat down with Wilson at his Moscow, Idaho, church for NPR's Newsmakers video podcast.

In a wide-ranging interview, Wilson said he opened a D.C. "church service" because of the number of Christians who adhere to his church's teachings within the Trump administration.

The entire thing - best outsider-looking-in  judgment - wholly unnecessary and burdensome to a degree on taxpayers. 

And stupid. Hegseth stupid. Dangerous stupid.