Trump Has All The Dirt On Sweaty Little Rubio He Needs To Neutralize Him

Wednesday right-wing loon and religious nut Rick Santorum ended his presidential campaign, as expected, after finishing with basically no votes in Iowa. (Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee and Martin O'Malley also dropped out after failing dismally in Iowa. Chris Christie will likely wait until he's humiliated in New Hampshire before joining them, although not before doing his best to destroy the hated boy in the bubble.) What was interesting, at least marginally, about Santorum leaving the race was his endorsement of "a tremendously gifted young man," Marco Rubio. That came just in time for the hard-hitting expose of Rubio in the New York Observer, which is owned by Herr Trumpf's son-in-law, Jared Kushner (husband of Ivanka, son of Trumpf criminal crony Charles Kushner.

OK, so here's the haps. Like we saw Wednesday, the Kochs told Rubio he could be president if he'd show them he could effectively attack Herr. And since policy attacks-- "he's not a real conservative" and "he wants single payer"-- haven't proven to not work, it's got to be personal stuff. OK, like Coulter says, Rubio's a sweaty-- she means greasy-- little liar and he may be nervous about going mano-a-mano against Trumpf but his team has an opposition book of personal slimery to use against Trumpf. So Trumpf unleashed the son-in-law on Marco to give him a taste of what he can expect if he dares. "Marco Rubio: Poor Little Rich Boy Runs Into Real Estate Trouble" may sound innocuous enough... but the story isn't. Ken Silverstein's sub-headline is more to the point: "The Senator's three houses, various lady friends, assorted con artist pals and piles of unexplained income."

When it comes to sheer brazen corruption, chicanery and dishonesty there is one candidate who stands head and shoulders above everyone else and that is the right-wing Cuban-American and Tea Party darling Senator Marco Rubio of-- naturally-- the great State of Florida.

Mr. Rubio’s entire public image-- the child of poor Cuban immigrants fleeing the repression of Castro’s Cuba who pulled himself up by his bootstraps and even now is a simple José Sixpack and family man-- is less tethered to reality than The Wizard of Oz. For example, in his autobiography, An American Son: A Memoir, Mr. Rubio describes how he allegedly grew up poor and mowed the grass and walked dogs to make a bit of spare change. Technically this may be correct, but most poor kids don’t get paid by relatives heavily involved in narcotics trafficking and whose pets double as guard dogs for a drug cartel, as was the case with young Marco, a federal indictment shows. (See these articles for more on young Marco’s upbringing.)

But it was only after getting into politics that Mr. Rubio really started making big money-- and he made it very quickly, with the help of a few intimate companions-- especially after taking over as Florida House majority leader and whip in early 2003. In fact, his income nearly tripled during the two years-- from $122,000 to $330,000, based on financial disclosure forms-- and spiked again in 2008, which may be tied to the fact that he became Florida House speaker in November 2006.

Mr. Rubio was able to cash in in spectacular fashion because Florida’s preposterously flaccid political rules allow politicians to simultaneously hold public office and work as “consultants” to major law and lobbying firms-- much like the arrangement that recently landed Sheldon Silver in prison in New York. That means that they technically can’t “lobby” but do it anyway and call it “consulting.” So, for example, when Mr. Rubio became House majority leader in 2003 he went to work for the powerhouse lobbying firm of Broad and Cassell, which is precisely the point where disclosure forms reveal a giant spike in his income.

Then, when Mr. Rubio stepped down from the House in 2008 (two years before he ran and won a U.S. Senate seat) he became partner in another law/lobbying firm-- Florida Strategic Consultants-- with the wife of a notoriously corrupt Florida politician and lobbyist named Esteban Bovo, sometimes known as “El Bobo.” (El Bobo’s wife, Vivian Bovo, had been Mr. Rubio’s top aide in the House.) While working at the firm, Mr. Rubio scored fat contracts from Miami Children’s Hospital and Jackson Memorial Hospital. Meanwhile, El Bobo was in position to appropriate money for the hospitals as chairman of a subcommittee of the Florida House Budget Committee. It was a win-win for Mr. Rubio and the Bovo clan.

Meanwhile, Mr. Rubio was making more money on two highly suspicious real estate deals. In the first, Mr. Rubio had a little help from Mark Cereceda, a chiropractor with a lengthy rap sheet. I should note here that after Dr. Cereceda lent a financial hand, Mr. Rubio flipped his position on a key issue of great import to the chiropractor.

Here are the key details: In 2003, Mr. Rubio bought his first house (at 6247 14th Street SW in West Miami) for $175,000, putting zero money down. He put it up for sale in 2005 but had difficulty selling it because of a weak local real estate market. But gracias a Dios, Dr. Cereceda’s mama, Nora Cereceda (now deceased), bought Mr. Rubio’s house in 2007 for $380,000 cash, netting Mr. Rubio a profit of about $205,000. Que suerte!

Shortly after Mr. Rubio sold the house, he did a 180-degree rotation on a key insurance bill for which Dr. Cereceda had been lobbying. Whereas he had previously been an outspoken opponent of the measure-- indeed, he was described in one local press item at the time as “the main holdout”-- he ended up voting for the legislation, which required Florida drivers to purchase $10,000 worth of personal injury Insurance.

Many of Dr. Cereceda’s clients were injured drivers who paid him with insurance money. And by the way, reported cases of personal injury fraud immediately soared in Florida after the measure passed.

Dr. Cereceda has a lengthy arrest record both prior to and after his mama bought Mr. Rubio’s house. In 2003, he was arrested on charges of Aggravated Assault With A Deadly Weapon. Two years later, he was arrested for Felony Battery and also for Disorderly Conduct, and then in 2013 he was busted for running an illegal political contribution scheme by which he ordered his employees to contribute to political campaigns in their names and then he and his relatives reimbursed them. The doctor got off light. He was sentenced to house arrest and given probation.

Dr. Cereceda has been a big donor to Ana Maria Pando, a disgraced former Hialeah branch county court judge, who wrote a letter to state authorities-- on official letterhead-- asking that Dr. Cereceda’s company be reinstated after it got into some legal trouble. Pando was later convicted for taking a bribe from Dr. Cereceda, who ratted her out.

Now let’s turn to Mr. Rubio’s second surprisingly profitable real estate deal. It involves his current Miami-area residence, which he bought in December 2005 for $550,000. He put only 10 percent down on the house, and took out a $495,000 mortgage. Then, just 37 days later, he took out a $135,000 home equity loan (which he initially failed to disclose on his financial disclosure form) on the property.

Mr. Rubio bought the house from a shell company called Sanval Boats LLC and no one knows who controlled that entity and hence who he in fact bought it from. But we do know that Mr. Rubio got very generous terms to finance the house from Miami’s U.S. Century Bank, whose CEO was a former head of the Florida Republican Party named Jim Greer, who later went to jail for money laundering.

A book about Greer called The Chairman: The Rise and Betrayal of Jim Greer has some juicy anecdotes about Mr. Rubio and David Rivera, Mr. Rubio’s one-time best friend and roommate as well as a noted womanizer and former Florida State House member and federal congressman. (A number of other top officials at the U.S. Century Bank were major political supporters of Mr. Rubio’s.)

A passage from the book reads:

“There was an indication that Rubio had an affair,” said Greer. A woman who had worked in his legislative office when he was Speaker of the House abruptly left and got a job at Florida International University as a part-time professor. Emails she had sent him through her college account had become public record. Our opposition research specialist said the emails included things like, “I have to talk to you right now. I can’t take this anymore. Why aren’t you returning my calls?” To an oppositional researcher the Crist campaign had hired, it appeared there had been a close relationship between the two and that Rubio had broken it off.”

In any event, Mr. Rubio’s $135,000 home equity loan was granted only because U.S. Century Bank mysteriously reappraised its worth upwards by about one-third, to $735,000, little more than a month after he purchased the property. “It looks a lot like somebody’s currying favor with an important political person,” one real estate analyst said of Mr. Rubio’s real estate dealings in a 2008 story that ran in a Miami newspaper. “People off the street don’t get this deal.”

It’s worth pointing out here that Miami-Dade County assessors put the market value of the house at $503,000 in 2006, some 50 percent less than US Century Bank’s appraisal at the same time. The house’s assessed value topped out the following year at $540,401 and last year county assessors estimated its worth at a mere $400,492, an increase from $391,443 in 2013.

David Rivera’s former girlfriend, Ana Alliegro, is currently under house arrest for her role in a complicated campaign finance/bribery scheme allegedly masterminded by Mr. Rivera, who helped her flee to Nicaragua before she was apprehended and turned over to U.S. authorities. Mr. Rivera is under investigation in the scheme, but the case has been stalled for months, infuriating Ms. Alliegro, who has publicly denounced Mr. Rivera and said she wants him to go to prison. I’m told by a few well-placed sources that Ms. Alliegro knows everything about Mr. Rubio, including the names of a number of his lady friends-- more coming on that-- but I was unable to reach her.

Mr. Rubio and David Rivera met in 1992, when both worked for the campaign of Florida Congressman Lincoln Díaz-Balart, and have been bosom buddies ever since. According to a Politico story, Mr. Rivera advised and stumped for Mr. Rubio in his first campaign for the state House in 2000. Mr. Rubio repaid the favor and helped Mr. Rivera win a House seat two years later. In 2006, Mr. Rivera played a key role in getting Mr. Rubio selected as the first Cuban-American speaker of the Florida House.

Anyway, Mr. Rivera is just a generally shady guy. (In 2012, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington named him one of the most corrupt members of the House.) He was investigated by Florida law enforcement authorities in 2004 over a $1 million contract he received to promote a ballot initiative pushed by a Florida gambling magnate named Alex Havenick. Mr. Havenick’s family has long thrived in Florida’s notoriously crooked dog track betting industry, whose roots trace back to Meyer Lanksy, Al Capone’s CFO. Mr. Rivera was not charged in the case.

There’s a lot more about all of this below and I should probably get on to the topic of Mr. Rubio’s lady friends, but first (and relatedly) I need to discuss a third house that Mr. Rubio owned, or co-owned anyway, with Mr. Rivera, the former House member and skirt chaser. This house is located in Tallahassee, the state capitol, where a lot of lobbyists work, including a few who are close friends of Mr. Rubio’s.

There is, for example, Bridget Nocco of Smith & Ballard (now known as Ballard Partners), a former top staffer in the Florida House who raised oodles of cash for Mr. Rubio when he served in the state congress and who is now “known nationally as a top-tier Republican fundraiser,” and who over the years has traveled with Mr. Rubio and gotten paid quite well from several of his dubious political action committees. (She did not return a phone call seeking comment.)

Mr. Rubio is also extraordinarily close to another lobbyist, but this one-- Dana Hudson-- is a vegetarian, according to her Twitter feed, lives in the Washington, D.C., area, and advocates on behalf of Homeland Security. Note here that Mr. Rubio does not serve on the Senate Homeland Security Committee, but the subject is dear to him, as one can immediately discern from his official website. Based on her tweets, the perky blonde Ms. Hudson is mad for Mr. Rubio, who she talks about obsessively, and is clearly a passionate supporter of his presidential campaign. For example, on January 6, when campaign consultant and “Jesus-follower” Gary Marx signed on with Mr. Rubio, Ms. Hudson tweeted, “@Garymarx very excited u joined #TeamMarco! Let’s do this! and elect @marcorubio #POTUS.” (Ms. Hudson did not return a message left at her office, nor did she reply to messages left via Twitter and Facebook. I should also note here that Ms. Alliegro, the former girlfriend of David Rivera, has suggested that Ms. Hudson traveled with her former boyfriend and knew him well.)

Anyway, let’s return now to the house in Tallahassee-- at 1484 Bent Willow Drive in an area called Timber Lakes-- that Mr. Rubio and Mr. Rivera co-owned and that Politico dubbed their “house of horrors.” When they bought it in 2005 for $135,000, they were repeatedly behind on the mortgage payments, it was almost foreclosed on at various points and they sold it last year for less than they paid for it. Also, I’m not sure exactly who officially hosted or attended but there were reportedly wild parties thrown at the house. The house sold in July for just $117,000.

Public records show that a woman named Tamara Hardy moved into the house in 2010 and lived there during the time Mr. Rubio and Mr. Rivera were trying to sell it. I have heard conflicting accounts about whether Ms. Hardy paid rent at the house or lived there because she was a friend of either Mr. Rubio or Mr. Rivera. I tried to reach Ms. Hardy for comment but was unsuccessful.

(I should also note that I sought comment from Mr. Rubio’s Senate office for this story and it directed me to his presidential campaign office. It failed to reply to a long list of questions for this story.)

I mentioned above a PAC and a bribe so let me turn to that story now, which actually involved a few of Mr. Rubio’s PACs and assorted businesses. Pay particular attention here to three key figures who were all intimate, longtime friends of Mr. Rubio’s:

• Alexander Heckler, an attorney who in 2011 was found to have set up PACs that shuffled illegal straw donations to political candidates for his clients. Heckler, a lawyer and leading Florida lobbyist as well as a “Hillraiser,” the term for then-Senator Hillary Clinton’s top fundraisers, performed legal and accounting services for the treasurer of a Rubio-affiliated PAC, but only disclosed that several years afterwards, apparently to obscure his role. Heckler is also the stepson of Franklin Sands, who for many years-- including the period when the story below took place-- was the most powerful Democrat in the Florida House.

• Joaquin Urquiola, the treasurer for the two Rubio-affiliated PACs who Heckler did work for, who at the same time was being questioned by federal regulators about his role at an Ecuadorian bank with Miami offices that was suspected of violating anti-money laundering laws by taking in cash from several South American drug cartels. Urquiola was an accountant and director of the bank, Pacific National Bank, and he and Pacific were in fact subsequently hit with fines for violating anti-money laundering laws and the Bank Secrecy Act. According to a 2011 story about the case in the South Florida Business Journal, the bank and its directors had previously been sanctioned for similar crimes and allowed “the violations to continue for years.”

• Bridget Nocco, the lobbyist friend of Mr. Rubio’s whom I mentioned above.

The story begins in late 2002 when Jeanette Dousdebes, Mr. Rubio’s wife, incorporated a nonprofit PAC called Floridians for Conservative Leadership Committee (FCLC). She was the registered agent and only director for this short-lived entity, which the State of Florida dissolved three years later because it had failed to file an annual report. Urquiola, the executive at the bank that allowed a drug cartel to launder money, was the group’s treasurer, and Heckler quietly helped him out, according to information provided to me by the National Legal and Policy Center, a Virginia-based watchdog group that provided key research for this section of the story.

During its brief existence, FCLC raised $228,350, of which roughly $35,000 disappeared into thin air, according to the entity’s own tax returns. Its largest donor by far was a scandal-plagued PAC called OPH ($50,000) but Democratic super-lobbyist Ron Book also gave generously. Bridget Nocco, Mr. Rubio’s lobbyist pal, was paid nearly $26,000 by the PAC for salary and consulting services, according to its nonprofit tax filings with the IRS.

Shortly before its demise FCLC made two payments to a super PAC (which are known as 527s, based on the IRS rule that allows them) with a similar name, Floridians for Conservative Leadership in Government (FCLG). The latter was formed in 2004 with Marco Rubio as its president and registered agent, his wife as the VP and Urquiola as its treasurer.

In any event, the State of Florida dissolved Mr. Rubio’s 527 in 2006 because-- you guessed it-- it failed to file an annual report.

Many of the companies and individuals that donated to the two groups had major business interests before the Florida Legislature and the two entities had overlapping donors, such as super-lobbyist Mr. Book, and payees, such as Bridget Nocco, who netted $90,062 from the 527 for salary and consulting services.

Another notable recipient of cash from Mr. Rubio’s 527 was a company called Servicarga, which in 2004 received $3,500, which it billed for “courier services.” What’s curious here is that Mr. Rubio’s wife owned Servicarga and that, according to IRS returns and other documents, the company stopped operating in 1997.



Mr. Rubio, Urquiola and Heckler were all players in another shady deal, this one involving a nonprofit PAC called Floridians for Real Family Values Inc. It was set up by Heckler in 2006-- the year Mr. Rubio was sworn in as speaker of the Florida House.

For some reason Heckler failed to disclose to Florida election authorities that Urquiola was the PAC’s treasurer, but he was listed as filling that role in the group’s federal tax returns, which Heckler filed. What’s also odd is that the federal tax identification number Urquiola used for Floridians for Real Family Values’ tax return was actually the same used by the FCLG, the 527 that Mr. Rubio created and was president of, which suggests that the two entities were essentially identical.

Between October 24 and November 2 of 2006, Floridians for Real Family Values raised $244,000. Also in 2006, Urquiola incorporated a company called Florida Media Productions Group Inc., which operated out of the same address as the FCLG.

Florida Media Productions Group was established to work on behalf of political campaigns, but there’s not much evidence that the company did any work at all. It never bothered to set up a website nor did it ever create a single TV, print or online campaign ad. The only income it ever received-- about $150,000-- came from two Heckler’s controlled PACs, one being Floridians for Real Family Values.

All that money was paid for “consulting” services, though the payments were made long after the election year was over. Most of the money raised by Floridians for Real Family Values that didn’t go to Florida Media Productions Group-- about $33,000-- simply disappeared when the former was shut down.

Mr.Rubio would appear to be a terrible money manager. He’s made a ton of cash in politics (and spent piles of political money on what appear to be personal items, such as a family reunion he later claimed was charged to his campaign by mistake), as a “consultant,” and on two real estate deals, but records show he has serious cash flow problems.

All of this raises a lot of questions-- to take an obvious one: Where does all of his money go? Whatever the answers, one thing is clear. Marco Rubio has some very, very curious and disturbing political bedfellows.

Something tells me sweaty little Rubio is going to be too scared of the megaphone Herr Trumpf commands to attack him personally, at least not in strong enough terms to satisfy the Kochs, who detest Trumpf and who are threatening to make Cruz their candidate if the boy with the high heeled booties doesn't do his part in bringing down Trumpf.

Days Before The Florida Primary, A Judge Forced Prosecutor To Name "Co-conspirator A"-- No One Batted An Eye When It Turned Out To Be David Rivera

Conservative Culture of Corruption (congressional chapter)

A wonderful new word for conservative parasites popped into the colloquial dictionary last year: affluenza. I can't think of a better term to describe the self-entitlement that defines garden variety American conservativism/white supremacy. According to yesterday's New York Daily News, Frederick Couch, "father of the infamous affluenza-afflicted teen, who ducked jail time for a deadly drunken driving accident because his family said he was too rich to tell right from wrong, was busted Tuesday for pretending to be a cop."

People like this are attracted to power almost as much as they are to money. And we find more and more of them turning up in politics. We have, for example 4 conservative governor who have either been indicted or are under serious investigation and likely to be indicted-- all of whom harbor pretensions to be president: Chris Christie (R-NJ), Scott Walker (R-WI), Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) and Rick Perry (R-TX). Florida Governor Rick Scott isn't running for president but his criminality is in a league of its own. Crooked congressmen are even more common!

Many people have their fingers crossed that Staten Island Mafioso, Michael "Mikey Suits" Grimm, will win reelection in November from the inside of a prison cell. His has a long criminal career but is currently under indictment on the first 20 charges. He's still serving in the John Boehner's House of Representatives.

Now we're hearing the the hammer is finally coming down on crooked Miami Republican David Rivera, a former congressman who was defeated in 2012 and claims to be running again this cycle-- although his only FEC disclosure shows $139,873 in debt and a loan to himself of $11,000. According to the bane of Rivera's existence, Miami Herald ace investigative reporter Marc Caputo, one of the gangsters in Rivera's mob, Ana Allliegro had finally pleased guilty-- and ratted out Rivera, who was officially named as a target of a federal investigation on Tuesday. At the court appearance, he "was identified by a prosecutor who confirmed the Republican politician was 'Co-conspirator A' in an $81,000 campaign-finance scheme to prop up a little-known candidate who used the illegal cash to trash a rival of Rivera’s."

“Why do we keep not naming the co-conspirator?” U.S. District Judge Robert Scola asked Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Mulvihill. “We’re past that time.” Mulvihill pointed out that U.S. Justic Department policy forbids prosecutors from naming unindicted co-conspirators.

Rivera’s ties to the case have been reported by the Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald for years, but he had denied wrongdoing. Heading into the Tuesday GOP primary for Congressional District 26, Rivera had also denied being the target of any investigation.

But Judge Scola wanted Mulvihill to leave no doubt and directed him to name names.

About three minutes later, Mulvihill made the first of six direct mentions of Rivera, who is suspected of also helping Alliegro leave the United States for Nicaragua when she was supposed to be cooperating with prosecutors.

…The extraordinary scene that played out in federal court-- and the steady drip of information showing the prosecution’s arsenal of evidence-- underscores the strength of the case the government is trying to build against Rivera. At least five people, including Alliegro, could testify about Rivera’s alleged involvement.

…In the Sternad-Alliegro case, the prosecution indicated that Rivera was the mastermind. Mulvihill said that, after Alliegro met with Rivera, she then approached Sternad, an unknown Democrat running against Joe Garcia in the Democratic primary for the seat extending from Kendall to Key West.

Sternad, a hotel night-desk clerk, was raising five kids and was so financially strapped that he was on food stamps and took the bus to work.

Alliegro “told him that she had connections to provide the financing for his campaign. Since, as I told you, he was an extremely poor man, he agreed to accept it, took it as a lifesaver,” Mulvihill said.

Sternad used the money to rent a car, pay his cellphone bill, phone voters with pre-recorded calls and produce mailers, at least one of which attacked Garcia, who went on to beat Sternad and then Rivera.

During the primary campaign, the Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald noted Sternad’s suspicious campaign activities and pointed out his incomplete campaign-finance reports. Campaign vendors, three of whom had been used by Rivera in previous campaigns, told the Herald that Rivera was behind Sternad’s candidacy.

Alliegro helped Sternad fill out his campaign finance reports, where he lied about the source of the illegal campaign cash, claiming the expenditures were from personal loans from his own account.

Sternad was later indicted for his role in the conspiracy and was recently given a seven-month prison sentence.

Alliegro faced similar charges. She pleaded guilty to four counts of making a false statement, conspiring and making illegal campaign contributions.

“She always said she would not invoke the Fifth Amendment, and that she would tell the truth,” said one of Alliegro’s defense attorneys, Richard Klugh. “And she intends to do that if called upon.”

She faces a maximum five years in prison, though that penalty would likely be lower if she cooperates in the case against Rivera. Her sentencing has been scheduled for Sept. 10. The informal plea deal announced in court indicates Alliegro, who has been incarcerated for nearly six months, could spend as little as six more months under house arrest.

Had Alliegro fought the case, she could have faced far more time behind bars.

Rivera spent his entire political career as Marco Rubio's consiglieri and the two of them own a notorious Tallahassee party house together. The Florida Republican Party will do anything to make this go away as soon as possible in such a way that Rubio is kept out of it.

God Answers Democratic Prayers In Miami-Dade-- David Rivera Is Back!

NRCC and Marco Rubio are not embracing their old pal Rivera this time around

Florida New Dem Joe Garcia has turned out to be a pretty big disappointment. A guy who certainly knows better, he quickly adopted the DCCC strategy of amassing a Republican-lite voting record in Congress. According to ProgressivePunch his abysmal 42.76 crucial vote score is, by far, the worst of any Florida Democrat (including Patrick Murphy), and one of the dozen worst among all House Democrats. Garcia votes against progressives even more frequently than reactionary Blue Dogs Jim Costa (CA), Dan Lipinksi (IL) and Jim Cooper (TN) and is exactly tied with West Virginia's Nick Rahall. And, remember, Garcia's district has a PVI of R+1 where Obama won both times; Rahall's district's PVI is R+14 and Obama barely scored a third of the votes against Romney and also lost big to McCain. Even Murphy has a "better" excuse for voting with the GOP so much-- a PVI of R+3. Garcia is just one big inauthentic mess who compromised away so much promise!

Yesterday, though, he may have had a lucky break-- a last minute entry into the Republican primary: the crook he defeated last time, David Rivera. Rivera's nemesis at the Miami Herald, Marc Caputo, reported that Rivera announced Thursday night that he would run for his old seat. In 2012, Garcia beat him 135,551 (54%) to 108,737 (43%), outperfoming Obama by 4%. But that was before Garcia had run up such a disappointing, defensive, Big Business-oriented voting record.

Rivera's thesis is that he didn't do anything wrong and all his troubles were manufactured out of thin air by the media, especially the Miami Herald. No one believed it in 2012 and there's been a lot more to prove it wrong since then.

“I will not answer to the lies of the Miami Herald,” Rivera said on the political talk show Ahora con Oscar Haza.

“I will not deviate from the issues and [will] defeat Joe Garcia. “Rivera said he’s running due to a “leadership crisis,” calling Garcia “incompetent.”

...Rivera’s announcement stunned Florida’s tough-to-surprise political world.

One of his fellow Republicans running against Garcia, Miami-Dade School Board Member Carlos Curbelo, issued a statement that blasted Rivera as well as Garcia, whose former campaign manager was recently jailed in an unrelated absentee ballot-request fraud scheme exposed by The Herald.

“Now more than ever our campaign is about putting an end to the scandals and the corruption that have plagued our community for far too long,” Curbelo said in a statement.

“The unethical conduct of public officials in both parties-- including incumbent Joe Garcia-- has landed people in jail and embarrassed the residents of Miami-Dade and Monroe Counties,” Curbelo said. “We will run a clean campaign focused on reestablishing the public trust and putting an end to this sad chapter in our community’s history.”

Curbelo is the Republican establishment favorite in the race and earned the endorsement of former Gov. Jeb Bush, an early Republican presidential frontrunner.

Rivera is a friend of another potential Republican candidate, Sen. Marco Rubio, though the two haven’t been as close as in past years amid Rivera’s mounting political and legal troubles.

The two still jointly own a Tallahassee rental home, but associates of the two say Rubio would like to sell it and that he doesn’t think it’s a good idea for him to run for Congress against Curbelo.

Rivera, who said he’d officially file for the office on Friday, didn’t address Curbelo. The two had a tense race against each other for Miami-Dade Republican chairman in 2008 when Rivera, then a state representative, won the post by just a single vote.



Rivera, then a state representative, went on to win his congressional seat in 2010 when he defeated Garcia and a phony tea party candidate who had links to Garcia’s former campaign manager, Jeffrey Garcia.

The FBI began investigating that incident last year after the Miami Herald uncovered new evidence in the case.

By then, the FBI and U.S. Attorneys Office were farther along in the investigation of Rivera and his friend, Ana Alliegro, who helped manage the campaign of a little-known Democratic candidate named Justin Lamar Sternad.

Sternad admitted to the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office that his Democratic primary campaign was funded with about $82,000 in illegal campaign contributions, which were used, in part, to bash Garcia to the benefit of Rivera.

Sternad identified Alliegro as a source of the money. A March indictment against her says she was aided by at least one unnamed “co-conspirator.”

Alliegro is in a federal lockup awaiting trial on charges of breaking campaign-finance laws and lying about it.

Sternad, who is cooperating against her, has yet to be sentenced after pleading guilty last year to charges of breaking federal campaign-finance laws and lying about it.

Alliegro was arrested in March in Nicaragua, to which she twice fled to avoid investigators and prosecutors, Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas J. Mulvihill argued last month in court as part of a successful effort to keep her locked up.

Mulvihill said that, after she surrendered her passport last fall, Alliegro and “another individual” left Miami by flying to Texas, boarding a Greyhound bus to Mexico-- where a U.S. passport isn’t needed for entry-- and then flying to her hideout in Nicaragua.

While in Nicaragua, Alliegro was frequently visited by Rivera, neighbors told the Miami Herald.

When the Sternad case broke in theHerald/El Nuevo Herald, Mulvihill had already been leading an unrelated federal tax investigation into Rivera stemming from a secretive $500,000 payment from a dog track.

Rivera also narrowly escaped a state indictment on 52 counts of theft, money laundering and racketeering revolving around his use of campaign money. State prosecutors said the alleged crimes were too old or too tough to prosecute.

Rivera has long denied wrongdoing in those cases and on Thursday night he downplayed close ties to Alliegro. “I know her family; everyone knows her family,” he said.

He also dismissed the Sternad case.

“Nobody cares about a fake campaign from two years ago.”

Rivera said “no” when asked if federal investigators have come knocking on his door.

“It’s ridiculous,” he said of the allegations.

The DCCC has relvamped and updated their old House of Scandal website-- still no mention of Joe Crowley-- but I bet they can hardly wait to tackle Rivera again. It remains to be seen if they can ever get anything as good as John Steward's Grimm Shady piece though!

You Remember Miami's Ex-Rep David Rivera, Right?

Florida GOP crooks Alliegro and Rivera

We've been on his case for a long time but this isn't about him beating up a woman or even his crooked fundraising or even about the free-flowing-drugs-and-shady-cash party house he and Marco Rubio maintained in Tallahassee-- or even about how he managed to finance his extravagant and expensive lifestyle. All the evidence of Rivera, who was defeated in a reelection bid last cycle by Joe Garcia, immersing himself in gangsterism is leading to a trial and yesterday intrepid Miami Herald reporter Marc Caputo had the latest scoop on Rivera.

A fake Democrat who Rivera recruited to run, Justin Sternad, finally admitted for the record that "Rivera was a part of the conspiracy to funnel illegal contributions to his campaign." Rivera and one of his associates, Ana Alliegro (who's been on the lam in Central America), gave Sternad $81,486.15 in illegal campaign contributions. Sternad has been cooperating with federal investigators who are trying to bring charges against Rivera and Alliegro.

“To those who think this case has gone away: You’re wrong,” said Enrique “Rick” Yabor, an attorney for Sternad, who last month amended three of his FEC reports to note the involvement of Alliegro and Rivera in his 2012 Democratic primary race for Congressional District 26, which stretches from from Key West to Calle Ocho in Miami-Dade County.

Neither Alliegro nor Rivera-- both of whom have denied involvement in the scheme-- could be reached for comment.

Sternad has never publicly mentioned Rivera or Alliegro, but he has privately discussed them at length with federal investigators.

Sternad was busted by the FBI after the Miami Herald and el Nuevo Herald raised questions about his campaign finances and reports.

During the campaign, Sternad-- a political unknown with no experience and little money-- was producing and mailing slick flyers that sophisticatedly targeted specific segments of the electorate in the district.

One mailer savaged fellow Democrat Joe Garcia over his divorce, echoing a line of attack espoused by Rivera, who was then the Republican incumbent. Sternad also admitted to using Alliegro as a de facto campaign manager-- a strange choice for a Democrat considering her Republican background and close association with Rivera.

As the feds closed in, Alliegro fled to Nicaragua at one point, returned to Miami to talk to investigators last year, and then apparently left again, according to her Facebook page.

If Rivera was involved in the conspiracy, it indicates he wanted to use Sternad as a straw candidate to defeat Garcia in the primary or at least wound him before the 2012 election. It didn’t work. Amid the scandal, Garcia walloped Rivera in the general election.

This kind of thing is pretty standard operating procedure for Florida Republicans and although Rivera will probably end up in prison for it, it could just as well be Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in the Miami-Dade district next door. Last year we looked at how she managed-- probably with help from her allies Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Steve Israel-- to pick her own un-funded Democratic "opponent," Manny Yevancey.

One of the easiest districts for a Democrat to win would be FL-27, the seat now held by Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. But there is no recruitment; there is anti-recruitment. DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz has made it abundantly clear to Florida Democrats that she will not tolerate anyone credible running against Ileana, who, like her, is owned by the sugar baron Fanjul brothers. Last year Obama's 7 point margin in FL-27 was one of the highest margins of victory in any district held by a Republican Member of Congress. But Wasserman Schultz had the DCCC make sure there would be no viable candidate. The "Democrat" who ran, Manny Yevancey, still hasn't filed an FEC financial disclosure report, which means he raised and spent less than $5,000. His petitions-- which were commercially collected by a firm in Tampa that was paid by "someone else"-- is almost totally signed by folks in Tampa, not in Miami, Coral Gables, Hialeah, Miami Springs, South Miami, Westchester or anywhere else in Ros-Lehtinen's district. The total signatures on his petitions from Miami-Dade- 12. The total from Tampa- 1,147. And the other counties with significant petition numbers were also on the other side of the state, Hillsborough with 656 and Pasco with 502. Very convenient for Wasserman Schultz and Ros-Lehtinen to have a candidate with no income, no roots and no chance-- and old dirty trick that anti-democracy hacks employee.

The DCCC has moved to make sure there would be no plausible opponent for Ros-Lehtinen again this year-- despite polling that shows a Democrat would beat her and despite FL-27 being one of only two districts in the country with Republican congressmen where Obama increased his winning margin in 2012. So, by all means… throw Rivera in prison, but take Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Debbie Wassserman Schultz and Steve Israel as well. And throw away the key.


UPDATE: Alliegro Arrested, Deported To U.S.

The noose is tightening around Republican criminal and former Miami-Dade congressman, David Rivera. His coconspirator, Ana Alliegro, was arrested Friday in Nicaragua where she was hiding and is now in federal custody in a Miami jail. She's facing a quarter million dollars in fines and 5 years in prison. The expectation is that she'll rat out Rivera and that, eventually, Rivera will rat out Marco Rubio on unrelated criminal enterprises the two of them were involved in when they were running the Florida legislature.

Pot, Aliens And Politicians... And The Unending Saga Of Florida GOP Gangster David Rivera

The self-described "bad girl" of Florida Republican politics, Ana Sol Alliegro, says she just wants "to cut hair like Paul Mitchell and make people feel good." So he's on the lam, hiding out from the FBI in the picturesque town of Granada on the shore of Lake Nicaragua, under the name Ana Solá and running a beauty parlour, Salon La Libertad, next to the Roman Catholic bishop's house. From a prominent Cuban fascist family under Batista, the violent, drug addicted Alliegro brags that "All my life, I have fought for the GOP." Her bungled dirty tricks on behalf of then-Congressman David Rivera helped cost him his House seat last November and is likely to land both of them in prison eventually.

She's said to be using much stronger drugs than the marijuana Republican Congressmen Dana Rohrabacher is trying to get legalized back in the U.S.-- well kind of legalized. With right-wing fanatics Andrew Harris (R-MD), Frank Wolf (R-VA) and Jo Bonner (R-AL) demanding Obama crack down on states whose citizens have passed pro-pot laws-- as Colorado and Washington just did, following 16 other states-- the more libertarian-leaning Rohrabacher (R-CA) introduced H.R. 1523, a bill that would immunize from federal prosecution "individual marijuana consumers [as well as] medical and non-medical marijuana businesses operating in states in which they are legal." His co-sponsors are Justin Amash (R-MI), Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), Steve Cohen (D-TN), Jared Polis, (D-CO) and Don Young (R-AK).

“This bipartisan bill represents a common-sense approach that establishes federal government respect for all states’ marijuana laws,” says Rohrabacher. “ It does so by keeping the federal government out of the business of criminalizing marijuana activities in states that don’t want it to be criminal.”

The bill’s approach to marijuana policy is seemingly consistent with the views of a solid majority of voters. A recent Pew Research poll found 60% of Americans believe, “the federal government should not enforce federal laws prohibiting the use of marijuana in states where it is legal.”

So where do the aliens come in? If you watch History Channel, you know they're out there-- and that they've visited earth and interacted with man for centuries-- and so do former Members of Congress Mike Gravel (D-AK), Darlene Hooley, (D-OR), Merrill Cook (R-UT), Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD), Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick (D-MI), and Lynn Woolsey (D-CA). They're holding a mock hearing in later April-- since Congress won't-- about the conspiracy within the U.S. government to cover up the existence of extraterrestrials. The 5 day meeting will be available in English, Spanish, Arabic, Hindi, Japanese and Mandarin.

Rubio Says No Progress Likely On Immigration Because Obama Is Such A Meanie To Republicans

Over the next few years, Marco Rubio will be doing everything and anything he can to distance himself from a series of corruption investigations and--presumably-- trials for his former roommate and longtime BBF, ex-Congressman David Rivera. Rivera was defeated 135,551 (54%) to 108-737 (43%) by Democrat Joe Garcia two months ago, largely based on the media reports of his stunningly corrupt career, much of it involving Rubio. And while Rivera was only supported by 43% of the district's voters, 46.4% backed Romney on the same day. Virtually every serious illegal activity Rivera engaged in had a Rubio connection.

Rivera came into office with the lingering smell of corruption on him like a cheap perfume. There were accusations he ran a courier truck delivering flyers for a rival campaign of the road, shady dog track payments to his mother, the filing of official documents claiming he was employed by a company that had never heard of him, and that foreclosed home he owned with golden boy Marco Rubio. Though, like Teflon, Rivera has so far managed to escape criminal punishment.

It was the latest round of accusations that brought him down, though. Allegedly he helped to fund the campaign of a ringer in his rival's Democratic primary campaign. He's allegedly picked up a random guy, Justin "Lamar" Sternad, set him up with close friend and self described "Conservative Bad Girl" Ana Sol Alliegro to run his campaign, and the shadiness just flowed from there. It's a controversy that involves cash stuffed envelopes, broken promises and an FBI investigation. And, oh yeah, Alliegro went missing shortly after shit hit the fan and still hasn't surfaced. ...His legal battles are far from done, and if the more bizarre of the accusation are proven he could find himself behind bars.

More importantly, his connections to Marco Rubio will certainly prove damning if Miami's wonder boy ever does decide to make a move at the presidency. Rubio and Rivera are close friends (and as we mentioned owned a house in Tallahassee together). Despite all the controversy, Rubio even recorded a robocall for Rivera in the days before the election

The heroes of the unmasking of the one-term crooked criminal were Miami Herald reporters Marc Caputo and Scott Hiaasen and after his electoral defeat, they were clear that his saga is far from over. "Voted out of office as the FBI and IRS pressed on with probes into his personal and campaign finances, Rivera officially becomes a private citizen Thursday. Rivera could be charged soon, sources familiar with the investigation say... Rivera's mercurial nature... has long concerned some Rubio backers. They’re relieved that Rivera’s political career could be over because it lowers the chances that Rubio-- a vice-presidential shortlister in 2012 who won’t rule out a future White House bid-- would get caught in the crossfire of a future controversy. The two still own a Tallahassee home, which a bank started to foreclose in 2010 just as Rubio was running for Senate."

The two of them illegally lived off campaign contributions for years and both raised hundreds of thousands of dollars through shady and criminal methods. Rubio's biggest fear-- one that drove him to cut a campaign robo call for Rivera in the waning days of his clearly doomed campaign-- is that Rivera will save his own neck by turning in Rubio. So... Rubio will do all he can to create as much noise and clamor as he can to get people to associate him with anything other than Rivera's criminal activities. And last week that was all the noise he started making about how the GOP can't be expected to support immigration reform because... Obama is so awful. Rubio claims he "poisoned the well" by pushing through the Dream Act by executive order.

His wholesale fix tries to square-- triangulate, if you will-- the liberal fringe that seeks broad amnesty for illegal immigrants and the hard right's obsession with closing the door. Mr. Rubio would ease the way for skilled engineers and seasonal farm workers while strengthening border enforcement and immigration laws. As for the undocumented migrants in America today-- eight to 12 million or so-- he proposes to let them "earn" a working permit and, one day, citizenship.

Those proposals amount to a collection of third rails for any number of lobbies. Organized labor has torpedoed guest-worker programs before. Anything that hints of leniency for illegals may offend the talk-radio wing of the GOP.

...Mr. Obama "may have even set back the cause a bit. He's poisoned the well for people willing to take on this issue," Mr. Rubio says. But he's still ready to do so, though he claims-- as hard as it is to believe-- that he hasn't "done the political calculus on this." As he knows, politics is everything on immigration. Comprehensive efforts failed twice under the Bush administration. President Obama promised in both campaigns to act, but then he didn't, even when Democrats controlled Congress his first two years.

In terms of legislative strategy, Mr. Rubio says he would want to see "a comprehensive package of bills"-- maybe four or five as opposed to one omnibus-- move through Congress concurrently. He says other experience with "comprehensive" reform (ObamaCare, the recent debt deal) shows how bad policy easily sneaks into big bills. It would also offer a tempting big target for opponents. Other reformers think that only a comprehensive bill can address the toughest issues. "It's not a line in the sand for me," replies Mr. Rubio.

Not missing a chance to tweak the president, he says that Mr. Obama has "not done a thing" on reform and may prefer to keep it alive as an electoral winner for Democrats with Hispanics for years to come. But, then again, "maybe he's interested in his legacy," Mr. Rubio adds, and open to a deal. The president, he says, would need to bring over Big Labor and talk back the most ardent pro-immigration groups from "unrealistic" positions on citizenship for illegals.

On the right, nativist voices in last year's primary campaign gave birth to phrases such as "electric fence" (Herman Cain), "self-deportation" (Mitt Romney) and other nuggets that turned Hispanic voters off. Mr. Rubio counters that most conservatives understand that immigrants are entrepreneurial and assimilate easily. "Immigration is actually an important part of affirming a limited-government movement," he says.

Is immigration reform a magic bullet for the GOP's troubles with Hispanic voters?

"No," Mr. Rubio says, but "the immigration issue is a gateway issue for Hispanics, no doubt about it. No matter what your stance is on a number of other issues, if people somehow come to believe that you don't like them or want them here, it's difficult to get them to listen to anything else."

He adds: "I think it's the rhetoric by a handful of voices in the minority, but loud nonetheless, that have allowed the left to create an unfair perception that conservatives and Republicans are anti-Hispanic and anti-immigration, and we do have to overcome that."

After two relatively quiet years in the Senate, Mr. Rubio is taking his first significant risk. Often mentioned in talk about a 2016 presidential run, he has decided to make immigration a signature issue.

But for all Rubio's verbal acrobats and transparent bullshit, Obama is actually delivering, while he sits around trying to talk the bigots and hatemongers in his own party to embrace the legitimate aspirations of America's fastest-growing voter bloc. Obama and his Senate allies are going in for a comprehensive bill that includes a pathway to citizenship and Rubio will be able to rant and rave all he wants but is, in the end, unlikely to support it and still retain the loyalty of his radical right base.

Supporters of comprehensive changes say that the elections were nothing less than a mandate in their favor, and that they are still optimistic that Mr. Obama is prepared to lead the fight.

“Republicans must demonstrate a reasoned approach to start to rebuild their relationship with Latino voters,” said Clarissa Martinez de Castro, the director of immigration policy at the National Council of La Raza, a Latino organization. “Democrats must demonstrate they can deliver on a promise.”

Since the election, Mr. Obama has repeatedly pledged to act on immigration this year. In his weekly radio address on Saturday, he again referred to the urgency of fixing the immigration system, saying it was one of the “difficult missions” the country must take on.

Parallel to the White House effort, Mr. Schumer and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a Republican, have been meeting with a group of at least four other colleagues to write a bill. Republicans who have participated include John McCain of Arizona, who has supported comprehensive legislation in the past; Jeff Flake, also of Arizona, who is newly elected to the Senate; and Mike Lee of Utah. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida participated in one meeting last month.

Democrats in the meetings include Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Senate Democrat; Robert Menendez of New Jersey and Michael Bennet of Colorado.

Basic tenets for the bill, Mr. Schumer said, were that it would be comprehensive and would offer eventual citizenship for illegal immigrants who follow a prolonged process to correct their status.

“This is a bottom line,” Mr. Schumer said in an interview on Thursday. “The Democrats have made it clear we will not accept a bill without a direct path to earned citizenship.” He said senators from both parties had been “pleasantly surprised” at how rapidly the talks had proceeded.

Mr. Rubio, a Cuban-American who has emerged as a star in his party, is making immigration one of his primary issues. He has advocated taking changes in pieces, arguing that lawmakers will get better results if the politically and practically tangled problems of the immigration system are handled separately.

Mr. Rubio has been preparing a bill that would provide legal status specifically for young illegal immigrants, known as Dreamers, who came to the United States as children.

Mr. Rubio said Thursday that the piecemeal approach was “not a line in the sand” for him. But he said he would insist that any legalization measure should not be unfair to immigrants who played by the rules and applied to become residents through legal channels.

His proposals would allow illegal immigrants to gain temporary status so that they could remain in the country and work. Then they would be sent to the back of the line in the existing system to apply to become permanent residents, without any special path to citizenship.

Mr. Rubio said he hoped to rally Republicans to support changes. Speaking of Latinos, he said, “We are going to have a struggle speaking to a whole segment of the population about our principles of limited government and free enterprise if they think we don’t want them here.”

In the Republican-controlled House, the future of a comprehensive bill remains unclear.

Representative Phil Gingrey, a Georgia Republican who follows immigration issues, said he remained opposed to “amnesty of any kind.”

He said that the Obama administration had been lax on enforcement, and that he would “continue working to secure our borders and enforce existing immigration law.”

But groups backing the overhaul say they are bigger and better organized than in the past. Last month, the labor movement, including the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and other sometimes-warring factions, affirmed a common strategy. Last week, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said it would work with labor, Latino and church organizations to pass the overhaul this year.

David Rivera (R-FL) Unmasked... Officially This Time

Miami residents are already asking about tickets to the trial

If New Yorkers are under the impression that congressional corruption begins and ends with Gambino Crime Family affiliate/congressman Michael "Mikey Suits" Grimm from Staten Island, they were disabused of that notion when they opened their hometown paper of record yesterday. Yes, CREW picked Grimm as one of their posterboys of congressional corruption this year, but they also put Miami crime figure David Rivera (R-FL) in the same sordid category. But Lizette Alvarez's New York Times story on Florida houses races certainly must have made New Yorkers realize that Grimm has some serious competition for America's Most Corrupt! (And wait 'til they find out that California's Buck McKeon makes both these guys look like rank amateurs! But that's a story the Times hasn't uncovered yet.) Back to Rivera:

“It’s a true swing state, and a close state ignites people’s passions,” said Roger Stone, a longtime Republican consultant who lives in Miami Beach. Add to that the state’s mix of immigrants, many from countries well practiced in tainted politics, and New Yorkers, who are accustomed to delighting in political rumbles, and the result is not altogether unpredictable.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in South Florida.

Since he was elected to Congress in 2010, Mr. Rivera, one of three Republican Cuban-American House members from Miami, has been dogged by allegations of wrongdoing while he was a state legislator. On Wednesday he was charged by the Florida Commission on Ethics with 11 counts of filing fraudulent financial disclosure forms, misusing campaign funds and concealing a $1 million consulting contract with a Miami gambling business while he served in the State House.

Mr. Rivera, who was Senator Marco Rubio’s roommate when both were state representatives, called the charges false in a statement, but he is also confronting another series of damaging accusations.

The Miami Herald has reported that Mr. Rivera ran a puppet candidate in the Democratic primary against his Democratic challenger, Joe Garcia, who lost to Mr. Rivera in 2010. The candidate, Justin Lamar Sternad, a part-time hotel worker with no political experience, has told the F.B.I. that Mr. Rivera was secretly behind his race, The Herald reported. The newspaper said Mr. Rivera funneled as much as $43,000 to Mr. Sternad, who paid cash this summer for expensive campaign fliers attacking Mr. Garcia. A federal grand jury is investigating.

One witness in the case-- a political operative who describes herself on Twitter as a “Republican Political Guru and Conservative Bad Girl!”-- vanished hours before she was scheduled to talk to prosecutors. Mr. Rivera, who declined through his lawyer to comment, has said he has done nothing wrong and knows of no investigation.

“We are not going to respond to unfounded rumors and innuendo,” said his lawyer, Michael R. Band. But, he added, “it’s like a Carl Hiaasen novel.”

Analysts say Mr. Garcia stands a good chance of winning next month. And if so, he would be a new breed of Cuban-American in the House: a Democrat who supports travel by Americans to Cuba.

Meanwhile, his party has stepped back from Mr. Rivera.

“I know the Republicans are putting enormous pressure on him to drop out,” Mr. Stone said, adding that Mr. Rubio has been asked to intervene.

But Mr. Rivera, who was named the most corrupt member of Congress this year by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, a nonpartisan group in Washington, has refused to back down. Recently, he ran a television advertisement saying, inaccurately, that Mr. Garcia was “under investigation for breaking the law.”

Last week, Mr. Garcia counterpunched, starting a Web site, davidriverafacts.com, delineating the accusations. An accompanying video warns: “The more we know, the worse it gets.”

"Mr. Rubio has been asked to intervene." That's a joke, since Rivera was Rubio's henchman when Rubio was Speaker and Rivera and he shared a party house in Tallahassee, where money, women and drugs flowed freely. The press release from Florida's Ethics Commission Wednesday is something Marco Rubio isn't going to want to get anywhere near-- not now, not ever. "The Commission found probable cause to believe that U.S. Congressman DAVID RIVERA, former member of the Florida House of Representatives, may have violated Florida ethics laws in 11 instances while serving in the Florida House of Representatives. Probable cause was found to believe that he received income from Southwest Florida Enterprises, Inc. (SFEI) while he was a member of the Florida House, when he knew, or with the exercise of reasonable care should have known it was given to influence his vote or official action. Probable cause also was found to believe that his contract with SFEI through Millennium Marketing, Inc. (Millennium) would create a frequently recurring conflict between his private interests and his public duties as a Florida House member or would impede the full and faithful discharge of his public duties. The Commission also found probable cause to believe that Mr. Rivera misused his public position by using campaign funds for non-campaign related expenditures..." It goes on-- and so do ace reporters Scott Hiaasen and Patricia Mazzei of the Miami Herald, which Rivera is reduced to claiming is part of a conspiracy against him.

Already facing FBI probes and a daunting reelection, U.S. Rep. David Rivera was charged Wednesday by state authorities with 11 counts of violating ethics laws for filing bogus financial disclosure forms, misusing campaign funds and concealing a $1 million consulting contract with a Miami gambling business while serving in the state Legislature.

Investigators with the Florida Commission on Ethics found that Rivera’s secret deal to work as a political consultant for the Magic City Casino [for $510,000]-- formerly the Flagler Dog Track-- created a conflict of interest for the lawmaker. The ethics panel also found that the Republican broke state ethics laws by failing to fully disclose his finances from 2005 to 2009.

...The FBI and IRS are also investigating whether Rivera should have paid taxes on the Magic City money.

The ethics commission’s charges come as Rivera is facing a separate FBI probe into his suspected role in secretly financing the campaign of neophyte congressional candidate Justin Lamar Sternad, who ran in the Aug. 14 Democratic primary against Rivera’s current challenger, Joe Garcia. Rivera has denied any role in Sternad’s campaign.

...In a flurry of television interviews Wednesday afternoon, Rivera claimed the case was rammed forward by the ethics commission’s chairwoman, Fort Lauderdale attorney Susan Horovitz Maurer, a Democrat. The commission is comprised of five Republican members and four Democrats.

The commission also accused Rivera of using campaign funds for personal use, relying on the FDLE’s finding that Rivera used campaign donations to pay off expenses on his personal credit cards. Rivera’s lawyers argue that the credit-card payments were intended to cover past campaign expenses that Rivera paid personally. Rivera has said that he’s still owed $75,000 for campaign costs he paid out of his own pocket.

Rivera also filed false or incomplete financial disclosure forms between 2005 and 2009, the commission found. Investigators said Rivera should have reported the Magic City payments through Millennium as income, and he also failed to report some real estate and a small number of stock holdings.

In addition, Rivera claimed he received income from phantom sources. For several years, Rivera said he worked as a contractor for the U.S. Agency for International Development. But USAID told The Herald and FDLE investigators that the agency never hired Rivera or his company.

Unless they botch the investigation or cover it up for a quickie resignation or plea deal, those "phantom sources" will prove to be international cocaine cash and will end not just Rivera's career but Rubio's as well. Who remembers when Boehner and Cantor solemnly pledged to teh American people they would take responsibility for keeping the Republican caucus on the straight and narrow and having "zero tolerance" for this kind of corrupt behavior? Has Boehner removed Grimm or Rivera from their committees? Not a chance. Even when another Republican from the House Armed Services Committee marched into Boehner's office and told him how McKeon's large and mounting gambling debts to Las Vegas/Macau crime figure Sheldon Adelson was endangering national security and that McKeon would sink the entire Republican Party, Boehner refused to take any substantial action. The tip of the iceberg has been uncovered but will the rest be exposed? Grimm and Rivera face real and independent media. McKeon's district media is a sad, pathetic joke-- not to mention the laughing stock that was once the L.A. Times-- and his problems are assiduously hidden from his constituents.