The man who could testify against ousted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is known as “El Pollo” or “Chicken.” His wanted poster from the U.S. government lists him as 5 feet 3 inches tall. His weight, 130 pounds. His hair was “bald”.
This nickname belies his background. Former General Hugo Carvajal Barrios was once Venezuela’s military intelligence chief, serving as the equivalent of J. Edgar Hoover in President Hugo Chávez’s government. In 2025, he pleaded guilty in federal court to charges of drug trafficking and narcoterrorism.
Maduro is currently in a Brooklyn jail awaiting trial on federal drug-terrorism charges, but a letter Carvajal sent to US President Donald Trump in December may suggest the former spy chief wants to be something more than a defendant: an informant for the president.
The letter, obtained by CNN from his lawyer and first published in the Dallas Express, told US President Donald Trump that Carvajal wants to “make amends” for his past misdeeds “so that I can protect the United States from the dangers I have witnessed over the years.”
His letter alleges a multilayered conspiracy, including that Mr. Maduro helped rig elections in the United States (Mr. Carvajal declined to say which ones) and conspired with the violent Venezuelan gang Torren de Aragua to flood the United States with criminals, drugs, and spies, an allegation that is entirely consistent with some of the charges currently facing Mr. Maduro in court.
Did the U.S. government understand Carvajal’s claims and offer of cooperation? Although the letter has not been publicly addressed by the U.S. Department of Justice, Carvajal has deep inside knowledge of the inner workings of the Venezuelan state and will be a key star witness for prosecutors.
Carvajal’s scheduled sentencing hearing was postponed last week, and no new date has been set, but New York attorney Renato Stabile said the case could “confirm, but suggest” that Carvajal took the deal. He said it would be “very unusual” for Carvajal to be sentenced if he was cooperating with U.S. authorities.
Mr. Stabile, an expert in this sector, represented former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was released from a 45-year prison sentence for drug trafficking on December 1, 2025 following a pardon from President Trump. Carvajal sent a letter to Trump the next day.
Stabile also said that although Carvajal is currently being held in a federal prison, he does not currently appear in the U.S. Bureau of Prisons’ inmate database, another sign of possible cooperation.
Carvajal’s lawyer declined to comment on the contents of the letter or his client’s case. The Justice Department did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.
Carvajal is a member of Venezuela’s veteran guard and was close to late President Hugo Chávez from their military days. The military intelligence agency he ran, DCGIM, was notorious for allegedly torturing and detaining regime opponents.
In 2019, he broke with Maduro, expressed support for opposition leader Juan Guaido, and fled to Spain. Part of a wave of anti-establishment defections, Carvajal’s departure was like a dam bursting, then-Senator Marco Rubio said at the time.
Carvajal, who is in exile, began publicly criticizing Maduro on his personal blog (now deleted) and on social media. In an interview shortly after announcing his support for Mr. Guaido, he told the New York Times that Mr. Maduro’s inner circle was involved in drug trafficking and terrorism. (President Maduro and the Venezuelan government have consistently denied these claims.)
But he had also been a target of the US government for some time. In 2008, the Bush administration sanctioned him for “substantially supporting the drug trafficking activities” of the Colombian left-wing extremist group FARC.
In April 2019, the Department of Justice indicted him in federal court, accusing him of attempting to transport 5.6 tons of cocaine into the United States in 2006 and providing automatic weapons and explosives to the FARC. Carvajal lived in hiding in Spain for several years, undergoing plastic surgery to hide her appearance, before Spanish authorities extradited her to the United States in 2023.
He has been in prison ever since.
In 2020, a year after Mr. Carvajal was first indicted, Mr. Maduro and more than a dozen other Venezuelan officials were added to a superseding indictment on similar charges, along with a former military intelligence chief.
Six years later, after months of military buildup in the Caribbean, the United States launched an unprecedented military operation in Venezuela, bombing Caracas and capturing President Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, from the presidential palace.
Mr. Carvajal’s name was not at the beginning of the January indictment, which was unsealed the morning Mr. Maduro arrived in New York in shackles with Mr. Flores. But new allegations have surfaced that are almost identical to Carvajal’s claims that Maduro worked with Torren de Aragua to send drugs to the United States.
It is unclear whether President Trump actually read Carvajal’s letter. His lawyer, Robert Feitel, told CNN he was unaware, and the White House did not address CNN’s questions about the letter in its response to the investigation.
Instead, an administration spokesperson said, “President Nicolas Maduro orchestrated many crimes against the United States, including sending drugs and terrorists into our country to kill Americans.”
“Fortunately, President Trump’s Justice Department arrested Mr. Maduro for a number of evil and illegal acts,” the statement continued, “He is currently awaiting trial in the Southern District of New York.”
Mr. Carvajal said as much in his letter, alleging that Mr. Maduro intended to use drugs as a weapon against the United States. He claims that what began under Chávez’s government has evolved into an organization called the Cartel de los Soles, led by Mr. Maduro and other senior officials.
CNN has reached out to Maduro’s lawyer and the Venezuelan government for comment, but has not received a response. President Maduro has repeatedly denied allegations that he is involved in drug trafficking.
Experts and former government officials say the “cartel” is not a formally organized criminal organization like in Colombia or Mexico, but rather a decentralized network of Venezuelan groups within the military associated with drug trafficking.
“The drugs that reached the city through new routes are not an accident of corruption, nor are they the work of independent traffickers,” Carvajal insisted. “They were deliberate policies orchestrated by the Venezuelan regime toward the United States.”
So far, neither Mr. Carvajal’s lawyers nor the U.S. Department of Justice have publicly confirmed whether the former intelligence official is cooperating with prosecutors.
But the most convincing clue that Mr. Carvajal could be a key witness is his own written offer to help the United States.
“I fully support President Trump’s policy toward Venezuela, because it is a measure of self-defense and is based on truth,” Carvajal said in the letter. “We intend to provide the U.S. government with further details regarding these issues.”
