A court filing in a federal criminal lobbying case against a former Republican congressman confirmed what the government watchdog Public Citizen warned against as soon as President Donald Trump appointed Susie Wiles to be his chief of staff: that her “lobbying client list is both extensive and littered with controversial clients who stand to benefit from having their former lobbyist running the White House.”The court filing was submitted Thursday by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) and sought to “quash” a subpoena that was served to Wiles in December.Wiles was called to testify as a witness in the case against former Rep. David Rivera (R-Fla.) and his political associate, Esther Nuhfer. They are accused of violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) by lobbying on behalf of the sanctioned Venezuelan businessman Raul Gorrín.According to a grand jury indictment from December 2024, Rivera sought to lobby top US government officials to remove Gorrín from the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List. He allegedly worked to conceal and promote Gorrín’s criminal activities by creating fraudulent shell companies using names associated with a law firm and with a government official. Rivera received over $5.5 million for his lobbying activities and did not register under FARA as required by law, according to the DOJ. The Miami Herald reported late last month that Rivera and Nuhfer are “also accused of trying to ‘normalize’ relations between the [Venezuelan President Nicolás] Maduro regime and the United States while Rivera’s consulting firm landed a head-turning $50 million lobbying contract with the US subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company.”Attorneys for Rivera subpoenaed Wiles at the White House, seeking to compel her to testify about her lobbying work for Ballard Partners on behalf of Globovision, a Caracas-based TV station owned by Gorrín. As the Herald reported, Wiles worked at Ballard shortly after running Trump’s presidential campaign in Florida. Due to her presidential ties she “brought an instant cachet” to the firm, where Gorrín was “hoping to gain access to the new Trump administration, which was threatening economic sanctions against the Maduro regime and Venezuela’s oil industry.”Gorrín was working with Ballard in an attempt to expand Globovision to the US as a Spanish-language affiliate—an aim that presented challenges due to the government sanctions and the Federal Communications Commission’s limits on foreign ownership of US TV stations. Rivera and Nuhfer’s lawyers are seeking Wiles’ testimony to show that her lobbying firm was trying to influence Trump, “on behalf of Gorrín, to bring about a regime change in Venezuela.”The subpoena document said the defendants’ lawyers want to question Wiles on her “extensive communications” regarding Ballard’s work with Gorrín and efforts to help the businessman gain access to Trump. They are also seeking similar testimony from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who as a senator met privately with Rivera, Nuhfer, and Gorrín at a hotel in Washington in 2017, according to the Herald. In the court filing, the DOJ said Wiles had “no apparent connection to any of the allegations in the superseding indictment concerning defendants’ activities as unregistered agents of the government of Venezuela.”
Public Citizen noted Wiles’ work with Ballard in November 2024 when it published the report Meet Susie Wiles’ Controversial Corporate Lobbying Clients, which revealed 42 lobbying clients the chief of staff had between 2017-24. The client list was “extensive and littered with controversial clients who stand to benefit from having their former lobbyist running the White House,” said Public Citizen on Friday. In addition to Gorrín’s TV station, Wiles’ represented a waste management company that resisted removing nuclear waste from a landfill, a tobacco firm that sought to block federal restrictions on its candy-flavored cigars, and a foreign mining private equity firm seeking approval to develop a gold mine on federal public lands.Jon Golinger, Public Citizen’s democracy advocate, said Friday that the subpoena in the Rivera case raises even more questions about Wiles’ potential conflicts of interest. “This kind of entanglement,” he said, “shows exactly why a person with Wiles’ lengthy record of controversial corporate and foreign lobbying clients is too conflicted to be running the White House.”
