Étiquette : Cartel of the Suns

Here is the full letter dated December 2, 2025, sent by Hugo “El Pollo” Carvajal to President Donald Trump, in which the former head of Venezuelan Chavista intelligence confesses two decades of narcoterrorism, espionage, and election manipulation carried out on the orders of Maduro, Cabello, and Cuban intelligence services.

«Dear Mr. President Trump and the people of the United States,

My name is Hugo Carvajal Barrios. For many years I was a senior official of the Venezuelan regime. I was a three-star Major General, enjoying the absolute trust of both Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro, and I held the positions of Director of Military Intelligence and Member of Parliament in the National Assembly. Today I am imprisoned in a United States prison because I voluntarily pleaded guilty to the charges against me: conspiracy to commit narcoterrorism.

I am writing to atone for my sins by telling the whole truth, so that the United States can protect itself from the dangers I myself witnessed for so many years.

I publicly broke with the Maduro regime in 2017 and fled my country knowing that I faced criminal charges in the United States. By doing so, I became its enemy. Knowing the risks, I acted with the firmest conviction: to dismantle Maduro’s criminal regime and restore freedom to my country.

Today I feel the need to speak directly to the American people about what the Venezuelan regime really 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 Hugo Chávez’s government turned into a criminal organization now led by Nicolás Maduro, Diosdado Cabello, and other senior regime officials. The purpose of this organization, today known as the Cartel of the Suns, is to use drugs as a weapon against the United States. The drugs that reached your cities via new routes were not accidents of corruption or the work of independent traffickers alone; they were deliberate policies coordinated by the Venezuelan regime against the United States. This plan was suggested to Chávez by the Cuban regime in the mid-2000s and has been successfully executed with the help of 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.

2. Tren de Aragua 
I was present when the decisions were made to organize and arm criminal gangs throughout Venezuela to protect the regime, including the group known as Tren de Aragua. Chávez ordered the recruitment of criminal leaders inside and outside prisons to defend “the revolution” in exchange for impunity. After Chávez’s death, Maduro expanded this strategy by exporting crime and chaos abroad in order to hunt down Venezuelan political exiles and artificially lower crime statistics inside Venezuela. The leaders of these gangs were ordered to send thousands of members out of the country. This was coordinated through the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of Penitentiary Services, the National Guard, and the national police forces. Tren de Aragua became the most effective and fastest-growing. When the Biden-Harris administration’s open-border policy became widely known, they seized the opportunity to send these operatives to the United States. They now have obedient, armed personnel on U.S. soil. To finance their operations, they were expressly ordered to continue kidnapping, extorting, and killing. Every crime they commit on your soil is an act ordered by the regime.

3. Counterintelligence and espionage against the United States 
I was present when Russian intelligence arrived in Caracas to propose to Hugo Chávez the interception of the undersea 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 one day attract American bombs. He ignored me.

For twenty years, the Venezuelan regime has sent spies to your country; many are still there, some posing 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 over decades, some of whom are now career politicians. American diplomats and CIA officers of the CIA were paid to help keep Chávez and Maduro in power. These Americans acted as spies for Cuba and Venezuela, and some remain active to this day.

4. Smartmatic and your elections 
Smartmatic was born as an electoral tool of the Venezuelan regime but quickly became an instrument to keep the regime in power forever. I know this because I personally appointed the head of IT at the National Electoral Council (CNE), and he reported directly to me. The Smartmatic system can be manipulated; that 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 inside your country. I do not claim that every election is stolen, but I state with certainty that elections can be manipulated with that software, and it has been used for that purpose.

People of the United States, make no mistake: allowing a narcoterrorist organization to move freely throughout the Caribbean and all of Latin America, doing everything possible to harm the American people, financing anti-Americanism across the continent, and facilitating the operations of other terrorist organizations and enemies of the United States inside Venezuela and now inside your own borders is a real and present threat.

The regime I served is not merely hostile: it is at war with you, using drugs, gangs, espionage, and even your own democratic processes as weapons.

President Trump’s policies toward Maduro’s criminal regime are not only justified; they are necessary and proportionate to the threat. I may even be underestimating what the regime is willing to do to cling to power. They have contingency plans for every extreme scenario to ensure they never relinquish control.

I fully support President Trump’s policy toward Venezuela because it is legitimate self-defense and is based on the truth.

I remain ready to provide additional details on these matters to the United States government.»

Hugo Carvajal Barrios 
United States of America 
December 2, 2025.