David M. Rivera Exposed Lying Again About Beating Up A Miami Woman

Back in July it was DWT that first discovered that David M. Rivera had beaten up a young woman-- and that there was a judicial record. He's always tried to claim it was a different David M. Rivera and that he never knew this woman, something many people who knew them have scoffed at. And if he didn't know her, why did he get arrested running a mail truck off the road that was carrying a flyer from a Republican primary opponent exposing his lies?

Eventually his campaign manager called and threatened me, demanding I retract my accusations and take down the photos. I told him to make sure he got the right contact info to his attorney. I never heard from them again. But earlier, I got a statement in the mail from a Tallahassee PR firm, Bascom Communications & Consulting, that Rivera had hired to deal with the exploding problem. It included this statement attributed to Rivera:

“When I ran for the Florida state house in 2002, a last minute campaign mailer was sent falsely accusing me of domestic violence. The mailer cited a 1994 case involving another individual also named David Rivera. In my 2010 campaign for Congress, some of my opponents have tried to use these same false allegations from 2002 to libel, slander and defame my character. While I find it offensive to even dignify these false allegations with any response at all, let me be clear: The 1994 case has absolutely nothing to do with me. I am not the David Rivera in that case and to suggest otherwise is a blatant and shameful lie.

And, although the media in Miami has reported extensively on Rivera running the mail truck off the road, there have been a plethora of threats from his campaign-- and from his buddy Marco Rubio's campaign-- to not report on the beating up incident. Rivera still insists he never even knew the woman, Jenia Dorticos. Well, earlier today Florida's Reid Report exposed that for what it is, another in a long, tawdry series of Rivera lies. Coming right on top of revelations that another GOP Young Gun, Tom Ganley, sexually assaulted one of his campaign workers, a mother of four, and then tried dragging her into a bathroom to rape her, NRCC officials are nervous. Do they need to be?

In the on-going saga of House budget chief and Republican Congressional candidate David Rivera, there are three things Mr. Rivera wants you to know: 1) he is NOT the David M. Rivera named in court documents alleging domestic violence against a woman named Jenia Dorticos; 2) he does not even know a Jenia Dorticos; and 3) there is no evidence-- say, a flier from a previous campaign, for instance-- that would prove that he ever knew Jenia Dorticos.

...But if Rivera doesn’t know Ms. Dorticos, how did this happen?

To counter Gonzalez’s mailer, Rivera’s 2002 campaign produced its own flier-- an ad featuring a photo of Dorticos and a statement defending Rivera under her purported signature.

The text next to Dorticos’ photo reads: “David Rivera has never harmed me! NEVER!”

A copy of the Rivera flier with the photo of Dorticos was obtained by Miami Herald news partner WFOR-CBS 4. The ad says it was paid for and approved by Rivera’s campaign.

Responding to questions from The Herald, Rivera’s current campaign spokesperson, Sarah Bascom, said Rivera “does not recall” the flier with Dorticos’ photo. Al Lorenzo, a campaign consultant who worked on Rivera’s 2002 campaign, remembers a counter flier was prepared-- though he says he did not see it, and he advised Rivera at the time not to respond to the domestic-violence accusation.

Lorenzo also said the campaign discussed recruiting Dorticos to defend Rivera in a radio ad.

“I know that I was told that she was willing to come or do whatever to do to clear the air,” Lorenzo said. In a later interview, however, he backtracked, saying they only discussed radio ads generally, without getting into detail about Dorticos.

So where is that flier? In a September 10 interview with popular Spanish-language television host Maria Elvira Salazar, Rivera denied it ever existed. When Salazar asked Rivera to reconcile his claim that he does not know Dorticos with her presence on one of his campaign fliers, Rivera responded “Never. That has never happened.”

...Well, the Reid Report has obtained a copy of that “never existed” flier (or pamphlet.) And indeed, it is as the Herald described, paid for and approved by the Rivera campaign, and containing a picture, statement and signature of someone who apparently, is Jenia Dorticos... And here is the back of the flier, containing a photo of a woman said to be Ms. Dorticos-- the woman David Rivera “doesn’t know.”


So here’s what we know:

• David Rivera isn’t being honest about not knowing Ms. Dorticos. There’s more than enough evidence, between the photos of him with her mother, to the photos his own campaign obtained from the alleged victim in 2002, to his former campaign manager Al Lorenzo’s statements, walked back or not.

• People who have worked on state House and Senate campaigns will tell you they tend to operate with just a handful of staff, sometimes just two or three people-- so it’s hard for one hand to not know what the other is doing. Besides, the flier was paid for and approved by Rivera, making it hard to believe he didn’t know about the content. Again, his 2002 campaign manager, Al Lorenzo, told the Miami Herald the campaign was in coordination with Dorticos at the time. Clearly they knew how to get in touch with her.

• While Ms. Dorticos has said, and sworn, that she doesn’t know David M. Rivera the politician, she has refused to say who the David Rivera in her 1994 complaint is. And according to the Herald, “she could not explain how Rivera’s campaign obtained a photograph of her in 2002, though she said she may have been contacted by the Rivera camp at the time.”

• For someone who doesn’t know Ms. Dorticos, Rivera’s team seems to have incredible access to her and her family, to the point that they apparently are able to produce sworn statements from them at will. For example: When a Miami woman, Alejandra Diaz, who described herself as a former girlfriend of Dorticos’ brother, Raul, told the Herald Rivera and the alleged victim ate at her home in 2000, the Rivera campaign quickly produced a sworn statement from Dorticos stating that not only does his sister not know David M. Rivera the politician, but that he has never met Alejandra Diaz. However, when the Miami Herald first contacted Raul Dorticos, he said he was not sure whether his sister and Rivera knew each other.

• When the Herald story broke in August, the Rivera campaign distributed a statement from Dorticos’ mother, Hilda Rabilero, attacking his FL-25 opponent Joe Garcia. However, the domestic violence allegations originated from his GOP primary opponents and Garcia wasn’t even mentioned in the Herald story. Rabilero also told the Miami Herald that her daughter was never a part of a domestic violence case, despite court records showing she clearly was.

• In another strange twist in this story, Ms. Rabilero, who apparently is a quite famous Cuban actress, was a paid employee of Rivera’s 2006 campaign, and photographs, which have since been removed from the candidate’s Facebook page but which included the one posted by Howie Klein, showed the two together at a fundraiser this year.

• And then of course, there’s that now-notorious mail truck incident, in which Rivera claims he was just “meeting the truck” driver to retrieve his own fliers, but in which the mail house says no meeting was planned, and no fliers removed, and for which the police report states Rivera tried to run the driver off the Palmetto Expressway.

And while we certainly don’t know for certain whether Rivera ever abused Ms. Dorticos-- only the two of them know that for sure-- it just seems to stretch credibility-- given public records listings showing that David M. Rivera the politician was the only David M. Rivera in Miami at the time, not to mention his ties to the victim and her family-- that another David M. Rivera is the one cited in the domestic abuse report.

While Rivera has denied even living in Miami at the time of the incident, public records show he purchased his Miami condo in 1994, the same year of the court filing. And according to Rivera’s official State House website, he also received his Masters of Public Administration (MPA) from FIU in 1994-- a time when distance education did not exist. (interestingly enough, Rivera’s campaign omits the years when he received his degrees…)

And not for nothing, but Mr. Rivera has a history of being less than forthcoming, to put it kindly. He has denied being friends with Ariel Pereda, a guy who makes his living advising companies on how to trade with Cuba, even though they are widely known to be close friends, and despite the fact that Pereda chaired his leadership PAC and a video from Rivera’s own website showed the two together at his February campaign launch.

Last month, the Naples Daily News reported that Rivera denied ever calling Joe Garcia a henchman for Fidel Castro on a radio show, despite a recording showing that he did.

Rivera and his best friend Marco Rubio initially denied the house they own together in Tallahassee was in foreclosure, except that it was.

And Rivera has been linked to various shady campaign activities, from alleged unlawful coordination with a 527 group, to abusing his power as Miami-Dade GOP chair and his position with FIU to push for campaign contributions from faculty.

It all adds up to some pretty damning conclusions about Rivera, and whether this is the kind of guy Florida should be sending to Congress.

That's some team the Florida Republican Party is fielding-- crooked teabagger under investigation for embezzling money with the use of an official credit card Marco Rubio, Rick Scott, who stole millions from Medicare, Bill Gothard devotee Daniel Webster who appears to believe disobedient women (and even obedient gays) should be stoned to death, and... David Rivera, someone who can't seem to open his mouth without lying! Earlier today one of their icons, Sarah Palin, canceled a fundraiser she had promised to do for them in Miami's Waterfront Theatre at Miami's American Airlines Arena.