At the end of July, Mauricio J. Claver-Carone declared he was “retired” from Venezuela, and given his record, that would be a very good thing. For nearly the past year, Claver-Carone has held no official position with the Trump administration, yet he has been running around Venezuela alongside the woman at the center of the affair allegations that ended his last government job, all while meeting with allies of the late Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez. Claver-Carone’s domestic politics raise red flags of their own: he repeatedly met with outgoing Senator Bill Cassidy after Cassidy voted to convict President Trump during the second sham impeachment trial.
Here’s how Claver-Carone’s last official post ended. In 2022, he was fired as President of the Inter-American Development Bank by a vote of his own colleagues over allegations that he carried on an affair with a subordinate. When a man is removed by a vote of his peers, it is fair to take the allegations seriously.
The subordinate at the center of those widely reported allegations is a woman named Jessica Bedoya. And yet Claver-Carone apparently believed it was a good idea to inform Reuters that Bedoya, now his “business partner,” had been meeting with Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez. The quote from Reuters reads:
“Claver-Carone said his business partner, Jessica Bedoya, a former colleague when he headed the Inter-American Development Bank, had met with Rodriguez on U.S. policy relationships and security issues.”
In other words, the same woman whose alleged affair with Claver-Carone cost him the IDB presidency is now conducting sit-downs as his “business partner” with the highest official of the Maduro regime following Nicolas Maduro’s detainment by US Special Forces. Both Claver-Carone’s and Bedoya’s LinkedIn profiles feature the LARA Fund logo in their employment sections.
Claver-Carone’s own dealings in Venezuela raise other legitimate questions. It has been widely reported that he was a key player in Centerview Partners, clinching a massive $150 million no-bid contract in the country. He has also self-admittedly associated himself with Alejandro Betancourt, a close associate of Hugo Chávez.
There are also red flags in Claver-Carone’s political dealings within the United States. Outgoing U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy has posted numerous times about meeting with Claver-Carone. Every one of those posts and meetings occurred in 2024, years after Cassidy’s 2021 “guilty” vote in President Trump’s Senate impeachment trial following the protests on January 6th.
Claver-Carone likely supported Cassidy’s decision to vote “guilty” in Trump’s impeachment trial. During his time as President of the Inter-America Development Bank, Claver-Carone sent a memo about January 6th on January 7th, 2021, suggesting President Trump was a threat to democracy following protests at the Capitol against the certification of the stolen 2020 Presidential election. In the memo, Claver-Carone told his employees to remain “vigilant,” acting as if MAGA was on the same threat level as an Islamic terrorist network, writing:
“In the wake of this tragedy, I want to urge all of you, especially those who live in the Washington, D.C., area, to remain vigilant.”
President Trump has distanced himself from Cassidy since 2021 and actively worked to defeat him in the 2026 Louisiana Senate primary. Cassidy lost his Louisiana primary race and President Trump maintains a near-perfect endorsement record in Republican primaries. Cassidy also reportedly got into a screaming match recently with President Trump over Iran at a GOP Senate event where he reportedly called President Trump “brother”, to which President Trump replied, “I am not your brother”. Claver-Carone’s choice to court Cassidy despite his anti-Trump record shows where his loyalty to President Trump truly stands. It’s nonexistent, to say the least.
Furthermore, United States government records show Claver-Carone has been on the board of the U.S.-Cuba Democracy Action PAC since 2006, a PAC that has been funding California Democrat Senator Adam Schiff and New York Democrat Senator Kirsten Gillibrand since 2006, dating back to their years in Congress as House Representatives.
Schiff and Gillibrand are now the powerhouses of the Democrat Senatorial Campaign Committee, with Gillibrand as chair and Schiff as vice chair, as the DSCC is currently propping up Islamic Communists Abdul El-Sayed and Peggy Flanagan. It is worth noting that Schiff and Gillibrand are two of the most anti-Trump members of the Senate. Ironically, the anti-communism Cuba PAC Claver-Carone helped steer ended up bankrolling lawmakers who turned out to be sympathetic to communists.
All of this comes as the United States eyes potential involvement in Cuba to remove the current communist regime. During an interview this week with Katie Miller, the wife of White House Senior Advisor Stephen Miller, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was asked, “You’ve been one of the toughest voices on Cuba.. forever. We captured Maduro out of Venezuela. Is Cuba next?” Rubio said, “I am confident that Cuba, by the time this administration’s over, before this administration ends, will be on an irreversible path towards a much different future.”
If that day comes, it would be in everyone’s best interest, President Trump’s most of all, for Mauricio Claver-Carone to stay exactly where he says he is, retired from Latin American political affairs. However, as Claver-Carone has proven over the years, you can’t exactly trust him at his word, and there are many reasons to believe he is still very much involved in Latin America, specifically in Venezuela and Cuba.
