Former Miami-Dade Congressman David Rivera has been charged for a second time with secretly working as an unregistered foreign agent in the United States.

But this time, Rivera is accused of trying to lobby a Trump administration official between 2019 and 2020 on behalf of a wealthy Venezuelan businessman who authorities say paid the former U.S. representative $5.5 million while trying to get himself removed from a federal government sanctions list.

Rivera, 59, was charged Tuesday by a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., with failing to register as a foreign agent for Raúl Gorrín, a Caracas TV mogul close to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, and with laundering lobbying payments through Rivera’s firm, Interamerican Consulting, Inc.

Gorrín, who was charged in 2018 by a grand jury in Miami with foreign bribery and money laundering, was sanctioned in January 2019 by the Treasury Department, which blocked the Venezuelan from doing business or accessing bank accounts in the United States. Gorrín is at large in Venezuela, according to federal authorities.

The Washington, D.C., criminal case targeting Rivera follows a prior Miami federal indictment brought against the former congressman in late 2022, alleging that the Republican and a Miami-Dade political consultant failed to register as foreign agents for the Venezuelan government.

“David Rivera intends to vigorously defend himself against these charges in the District of Columbia just as he has done so in the Southern District of Florida,” defense attorney Ed Shohat said on Wednesday.

The extent of Rivera’s alleged activities as an unregistered foreign agent for Gorrín is not entirely clear from the new indictment.

For example, the indictment says: “Rivera sought to lobby senior government officials ... on Gorrín’s behalf, and for his benefit, to have Gorrín removed from the Specially Designated Nationals list.”

“Rivera sought to make contact with Government Official-1 both directly and through a series of intermediaries,” the indictment adds. “Rivera willfully engaged in these activities without registering under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, as required by law.”

The indictment accuses Rivera of creating “fraudulent” Delaware shell companies using names associated with a law firm and with Government Official-1 in the Trump administration to give the false impression they were legitimate. He then used the shell companies to pay others who assisted him in his effort to lobby senior government officials on Gorrín’s behalf, the indictment says.

The indictment also alleges that Rivera received more than $5.5 million for his lobbying and consulting services “from and on behalf of Gorrín, with the payments transferred to Rivera through a series of Hong Kong intermediary companies.” It also claims that Rivera moved $900,000 of that money into his political campaign account at SunTrust Bank on Dec. 31, 2019.

Rivera, perhaps best known as a conservative, anti-Castro politician who served one term as a Miami-Dade congressman between 2011 and 2013, is accused in the prior Miami indictment of accepting $20 million in fees from the U.S. subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company that prosecutors say was actually for lobbying on behalf of Venezuela and its authoritarian leader, Maduro.

In December 2022, Rivera and political consultant Esther Nuhfer were charged by an indictment accusing them of conspiring to commit offenses against the United States and failing to register as foreign agents with the U.S. Attorney General’s Office as part of their consulting work for Venezuela’s oil subsidiary, PDV USA — along with money laundering.

Both have denied wrongdoing.

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