The second filing names Rodriguez Castro and is more revealing: “informational materials and dissemination,” sample social media content and strategy, and “expectations and relationship building.” Rodriguez Castro serves inside the Ministry of the Interior’s General Directorate for Personal Security, the MININT directorate that has protected Cuba’s leadership since the 1960s.

That isn’t where a government normally workshops public messaging. Tellingly, it’s the filing with an actual name attached, while the diplomatic channel has none.

Mellor’s account of how he got there hasn’t held up well. He told USA Today he went at the urging of the Cuban-American National Chamber of Commerce, a Miami-based exile business group. Its vice president, Rafael Sixto, responded that the organization “did not in any way endorse or urge” the trip and “strongly opposes any meeting with any member of the current Cuban regime.”

The State Department has kept its distance, saying Mellor “is not authorized to speak on behalf of the United States government.” Rep. Seth Magaziner (R-RI), the incumbent Mellor hopes to unseat, calls him “a registered agent of a foreign dictatorship” who “should not represent Rhode Island in Congress.”

Mellor’s defense has remained consistent: he registered because federal transparency law required it, took no money, traveled as a private citizen pursuing Rhode Island export opportunities, and supports the administration’s Cuba policy.

That doesn’t easily square with the chamber’s denial or with a filing routed through a leadership protection directorate. But it’s his case.

To understand why Mellor might do this, it helps to look at who he is. He’s 56, a Woonsocket native and former Marine who built wealth in Florida through a concrete business — by his count, 17 companies over three decades. His firm, like many others, struggled amid the housing downturn and filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2010. 

But Florida licensing records from June 2026 still list him as the primary licensee behind American Precast in Venice, so it appears he never fully left the trade. Now, after three decades in Florida, he is running for Rhode Island’s 2nd from a rented house in the district.

For roughly five years, he also operated as an informal “chief of staff” to retired Gen. Michael Flynn, accompanying him through the ReAwaken America circuit. He built a media operation premised on “unfiltered access to information” and opened a Sarasota gathering place, The Hollow, characterized as a “playground for the far right.”

That pattern matters more than any explanation he’s offered for Havana. Much of Mellor’s public life follows one instinct: build his own channel rather than work through one, trusting his judgment over institutional process. He’s self-funding a campaign he says could cost $8 million, and he was present at the Jan. 6, 2021, march. Flying to Havana on his own initiative fits the same mold.

There’s a complication Mellor can’t entrepreneur his way around. Under 18 U.S.C. § 219, a sitting member of Congress can’t act as an agent of a foreign principal required to register under FARA. Any relationship with Cuban officials would have to end before he took office.

That collision may never arrive. Mellor must first win a contested Sept. 9 primary against Dr. Stephen Skoly, then unseat Magaziner in a district where Republicans have struggled. None of that softens the immediate political cost. For Magaziner, this is an attack line requiring almost no explanation.

Which raises the more interesting question: What did the Cubans think they were getting from Mellor?

Money was almost certainly not the point; his filing says none changed hands. And the personal-security connection argues against a broad public-relations campaign as the whole explanation. Content ideas and messaging comparisons aren’t the obvious reason to involve the directorate guarding Cuba’s leadership.

That points toward something narrower: a line into Washington. Rubio is a uniquely difficult adversary for Havana. He knows the regime and its methods and cannot easily be sold promises of reform or accommodation. That creates an incentive to look around him — toward President Donald Trump or Vice President JD Vance — through people already connected to their political world. Mellor isn’t a Cuba expert or a Republican foreign-policy figure, but he has spent years beside Flynn and sits inside that ecosystem.

Mellor denies exactly this. “I’m not back-channeling and I’m not going to circumvent Marco Rubio,” he told USA Today. “Rubio’s been doing an amazing job. A conversation isn’t betrayal.”

It is an unusually specific denial, considering the possibilities raised by his own filing.

There’s a separate question of why Mellor said yes, and the desire for significance may explain that better than access does. His post-concrete career has involved building a personal mythology: Flynn’s confidant, founder of his own truth-telling media brand, self-funded outsider who answers to no party. Being the American in the room as Cuba’s leadership maneuvers around Washington offers something larger: a chance to become part of the story himself.

If Mellor sees himself helping open a channel between Havana and the Trump administration, that isn’t merely access. It’s a legacy claim, one that pays off in reputation whether he wins or loses. His still-active Florida precast business means the payoff might not be purely symbolic either.

CUBAN FOREIGN AGENT RUNNING FOR CONGRESS CLAIMS CONFLICTING RESIDENCIES

There’s no public evidence that Mellor carried messages to Trump or Vance, or that either knew anything about his activities. The point is different. He represents the kind of unconventional intermediary a government might explore when the conventional door is closed. And Cuba has spent six decades learning how to survive closed doors.

That may be the most important part of the Havana detour. Mellor apparently believed he’d found a way to build his own channel to Cuba. It’s worth considering whether Havana believed it had found a channel of its own: one that costs little if he loses, but might someday lead around Rubio and toward the two men sitting above him.