🇻🇪📝🇺🇸 — Former Venezuelan Chavista intelligence chief Hugo “El Pollo” Carvajal sends a letter to President Donald Trump, in which he confesses to two decades of narcoterrorism, espionage, and electoral manipulation under orders from Nicolás Maduro, Diosdado Cabello, and Cuban intelligence:

My name is Hugo Carvajal Barrios. For many years I was a high-ranking official of the Venezuelan regime. I was a three-star division general, fully trusted by both Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro, and I held the positions of Director of Military Intelligence and member of the National Assembly. Today I am imprisoned in a U.S. jail because I voluntarily pleaded guilty to the charges against me: narcoterrorism conspiracy.

Today I feel the need to address the American people about the reality of what the Venezuelan regime truly is and why President Trump’s policies are not only correct, but absolutely necessary for the national security of the United States.

1. Narcoterrorism
I was a direct witness to how the government of Hugo Chávez turned into a criminal organization now led by Nicolás Maduro, Diosdado Cabello, and other high-ranking officials of the regime. The purpose of this organization, now known as the Cartel of the Suns, is to use drugs as a weapon against the United States. The drugs that reached your cities through new routes were not accidents of corruption nor simply the work of independent traffickers; they were deliberate policies coordinated by the Venezuelan regime against the United States. This plan was suggested by the Cuban regime to Chávez in the mid-2000s and has been successfully carried out with help from the FARC, the ELN, Cuban operatives, and Hezbollah. The regime provided them with weapons, passports, and impunity so that these terrorist organizations could operate freely from Venezuela against the United States.

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3. Counterintelligence and espionage against the United States
I was present when Russian intelligence arrived in Caracas to propose to Hugo Chávez the intervention of the submarine internet cables that connect most of South America and the Caribbean islands to the United States, with the aim of penetrating U.S. government communications. In 2015 I warned Maduro that allowing Russian intelligence to build and operate a secret listening post on La Orchila island would someday attract U.S. bombs. He ignored me.

For twenty years, the Venezuelan regime has sent spies into your country; many are still there, some disguised as members of the Venezuelan opposition. Cuban intelligence showed me their networks inside your East Coast naval bases. They boasted of having sent thousands of spies for decades, some of whom today are career politicians. U.S. diplomats and CIA officers were paid to help Chávez and Maduro stay in power. These Americans acted as spies for Cuba and Venezuela, and some remain active to this day.

4. Smartmatic and its elections
Smartmatic was born as an electoral tool of the Venezuelan regime, but soon became an instrument to keep the regime in power forever. I know this because I myself placed the head of information technology of the National Electoral Council (CNE) in his position, and he reported directly to me. The Smartmatic system can be altered; this is a fact. This technology was later exported abroad, including to the United States. Regime operatives maintain relationships with election officials and voting machine companies in your country. I am not claiming that all elections are stolen, but I do state with certainty that elections can be manipulated with that software, and that it has been used to do so.

People of the United States, do not misunderstand the threat posed by allowing a narcoterrorist organization to move freely through the Caribbean and all of Latin America, doing everything possible to harm the American people, funding anti-Americanism across the continent, and facilitating the operations of other terrorist organizations and enemies of the United States from within Venezuela and now within your own borders.