Infamous YouTube lawyer is mysteriously honored by Rubio at Trump gala… after sordid video and 'questionable' relationship with another couple sparked police raid at family home

By ROSS IBBETSON, ASSOCIATE EDITOR Published: 15:18, 9 July 2026 | Updated: 15:23, 9 July 2026 On the top floor of the State Department, in the historic Benjamin Franklin Room, Marco Rubio hosted a lavish reception to launch a limited edition passport marking America's 250th birthday. Dignitaries and celebrities were among those invited to collect the passports in person on July 2. Just 25,000 will be issued nationwide, each featuring Trump's picture and signature, the first living president featured in a US passport.  Among them was Nick Rekieta, a YouTube lawyer who shot to fame covering Johnny Depp's defamation trial against Amber Heard, but whose life spectacularly unraveled when police raided his drug-filled Minnesota home in 2024. Rekieta, 44, told the Daily Mail he and his family were personally invited by a friend inside the State Department, a longtime fan of his channel whom he declined to name. He said he gave the friend the details of his drug case and was told it wouldn't be a problem. A full background check was still run on every adult attendee, though Rekieta isn't sure the process would have flagged a state-level case. 'I don't know what their criteria was,' he added. His wife Kayla and their five children each received one of the documents, seven in all, which Rekieta described as 'Trump-embossed passports.' Inside, he mingled with a who's who of the online right, no surprise for a broadcaster who has spent recent months livestreaming the Tyler Robinson pretrial hearings in the Charlie Kirk murder case and defending ICE agents in fatal Minneapolis shootings. He posed for a photo with conservative activist Jack Posobiec. 'It was really cool to meet him in person,' Rekieta said, calling him 'just a really, really nice gentleman.' Nick Rekieta and his wife Kayla were arrested at their home in Minnesota in May 2024  Marco Rubio and his wife Jeanette flank singer Lee Greenwood and his wife Kimberly Payne Marco Rubio holds up one of the new Trump passports in the Benjamin Franklin Room at the State Department on July 2 Donald Trump's limited edition passport features a picture of the President and his signature on the inside front cover It capped a stunning reversal for a man who, just over a year earlier, stood in a Willmar, Minnesota courtroom to be sentenced over the cocaine deputies found in his bedroom safes. Under the terms of his probation, Rekieta needed his supervising officer's sign-off just to leave Minnesota, let alone fly to Washington to collect a passport from the Secretary of State. Officers battered down his front door in Spicer, Minnesota in May 2024 and found 26.67 grams of cocaine, eight ketamine tablets, a digital scale and a Sig Sauer AR rifle with several magazines, with four children in the house. He was initially charged with felony second-degree drug possession, punishable by up to 25 years, along with counts of child endangerment and possessing firearms as a drug user. Those two counts were dropped when he pleaded guilty in January 2025 to a reduced third-degree possession charge. His wife's charges were dismissed entirely, and in April 2025 he was sentenced to 30 days in jail, five years of supervised probation and 80 hours of community service. So how does a man still on probation, banned from touching a firearm and subject to random drug testing, get handed one of the most coveted documents in Trump's Washington? 'America is the land of opportunity, and part of that opportunity is the opportunity to be redeemed,' Rekieta told the Daily Mail. 'People aren't beholden to their past.' Nick Rekieta and his wife Kayla at the Anime Matsuri gaming event July 31, 2022 Nick Rekieta at the Anime Matsuri gaming event July 29, 2022 Everyone, he added, deserves 'the courtesy of being allowed to move on' from 'mistakes or bad decisions'. The Rekietas were among the very first Americans to hold the new document. 'You are, I would guess, right, among the first people in the country,' Rubio told guests, before an official interjected: 'They are the first.' The family's whirlwind began on July 1, when they flew into Washington and went straight from the airport to the passport office. Staff 'manually took all the information, verified everything right there while we were standing there', Rekieta said. Because his five children had no previous passports, each had to be interviewed in person. The old-fashioned route came with one perk: 'It was done overnight.' There was no discount for the hand-picked guests. 'We did have to pay the normal price for them,' he said. 'The kids are like $100 and adults are like $200.' The next day the family returned for the main event, a two-hour bash with food and mingling, a 'typical reception,' until country legend Lee Greenwood appeared and serenaded the room with his anthem God Bless The USA. Then came Rubio who called the passport 'a tremendous source of pride for many of us when we travel abroad' and 'a lifeline for a lot of people.' He also revealed Trump's verdict on his own copy, hand-delivered that morning. 'I gave the President his this morning and he loved it. He absolutely loved it,' Rubio said, adding that Trump asked: 'Well, can I hold onto this for a couple days? Because I want to show it to everybody that comes in the office.' Rubio walked guests through the frills: every passport now ships in a presentation box with 'a certificate of authenticity like we do with watches and jewelry', pages that animate as they flip, and QR codes each linking to 'a video presentation of that moment in American history.' Greenwood and his former Miss Tennessee USA Kimberly Payne 'We think it's something people will cherish and hold onto for a very long time because of what it signifies,' he told the room. Then he was gone, in Rekieta's telling, 'kind of ushered away pretty quickly.' 'I don't know if there was like a super VIP ticket or something that got you back there,' the YouTuber mused. Moments later a side room opened and the spoils were handed out 'Right after Rubio spoke, we kind of got in line and went and collected the passports,' Rekieta said. The guest list, he added, ran from 'celebrities of various stature' and 'radio personalities' to ICE agents and lawyers: 'a very eclectic mix of people'. And despite the branding, he insisted the afternoon was more patriotism than party. 'It wasn't overly Trumpy,' he said. 'It wasn't like a MAGA rah rah thing or anything like that.' Two days later the family braved the July 4 crowds at the Washington Monument to watch the anniversary fireworks. 'This is kind of a once in a lifetime thing,' he said of giving his children the view. It is all a world away from 9.13am on May 23, 2024, when Kandiyohi County deputies arrived at the family's Spicer home with a search warrant and a battering ram. A child answered the door but would not let officers in, and Rekieta, stopped in his car nearby, refused to give up the door code, according to the criminal complaint. Handed a copy of the warrant, he 'looked at it and threw it on the ground.' Bettina Trump, wife of Donald Trump Jr., holds a design of a US passport featuring an image of President Donald Trump, as she looks on as President Trump speaks to the press before he boards Air Force One for his first flight aboard the Boeing 747-8 that Qatar gifted the United States to use for executive travel, at Joint Base Andrews, in Maryland, July 1 A limited edition U.S. Passport featuring U.S. President Donald Trump, on display at the State Department exhibit on the fourth day of the "Great American State Fair" on the National Mall on June 28, 2026 in Washington, DC Inside the master suite, investigators catalogued snort tubes, a 'cocaine scooper,' a $100 bill dusted with residue, baggies of white powder locked in safes and spent shell casings by the nightstand. Deputies also noted sores on his arms they said were consistent with drug use. The probe began a week earlier with a report of possible child neglect and drug use.  Defense filings later claimed the case grew out of church rumors about the couple, including 'concerns' over 'a questionable relationship with an additional couple, Aaron and April Imholte.' A detective who trawled Rekieta's livestreams to his more than 400,000 subscribers told a judge the host had visibly deteriorated on camera, returning from one bathroom break with 'a white powdery substance on his nose.' 'Nicholas is so under the influence of a substance to the point he has to close one eye to read his screen, rambles, and slurs his speech,' Detective Quin Pomplun wrote in his affidavit. Rekieta's lawyers cried foul, claiming the warrant leaned on doctored footage and a vengeful former friend, but Judge Stephen Wentzell rejected the challenge, ruling the affidavit 'accurate and reliable' and refusing to throw out the guns. When he pleaded guilty, Rekieta insisted he was not covering for his wife or their friend April Imholte, whose charges were also dropped. 'I'm not falling on any sword. I'm just pleading based on the facts: the recovered illegal substances were mine. They were kept in a safe, which only I could access,' he told Louisiana station KADN. 'I made a s***load of really bad decisions,' he said on a fellow YouTuber's channel.  'They hurt people I really cared about… I have to deal with for the rest of my life, that I harmed some of the people who are closest to me. That's a product of me and losing control.' His sentence came with strings: random drug and alcohol testing, no firearms, cognitive skills training and, pointedly for a man now clutching a fresh passport, permission from his probation officer before leaving Minnesota. He was ordered to report to Kandiyohi County Jail on August 1 last year to serve his 30 days, with two days' credit, though the deal allowed his probation officer to seek a deferral. His law license expired last October. Rekieta, who says he has not taken a case since around 2021, blames unfinished legal coursework 'in the wake of my criminal charges' and insists: 'I'm about to rectify that.' The sweetener in his plea deal is a stay of adjudication, meaning that after successfully completing probation the felony disappears without a conviction. 'Technically, even though I pled guilty, I wasn't convicted, so I'm not technically a felon, so to speak,' he told the Daily Mail. 'I'm just under probation conditions, assuming I complete those, my crime will be dismissed. It will be like it never happened.' The State Department and the White House declined to comment.