BENNY JOHNSON - Former CIA Agent Just BLEW The Doors Off How American Elections Get Stolen — How The CIA Is In On It. This BLEW My Mind (VIDEO 28 MIN)

Retired senior CIA official Gary Berntsen reveals the incredible story of how the Venezuelans hacked America’s elections. And the United States did nothing to stop it.

“I'd like to just jump in and say that I'm a retired CIA officer. I'm the guy that did the entry into Afghanistan 20 years ago, put Karzai in power, speak Persian. I was the chief of Hezbollah operations globally, chief of station in the Middle East, and chief of station a couple of times in Latin America. I've basically been in an ops environment for most of my life.

I wrote a book years ago called Jawbreaker about the invasion of Afghanistan with Ralph Pezzullo. Ralph is actually the writer of the book that you're talking about — the stolen elections book. I couldn't write it because the CIA wouldn't have ever approved it with the publication review board. So Ralph Pezzullo wrote it. You can get it on Amazon. It's about myself and about Martin Rodil, who is my business partner.

We began about seven years ago working together, doing what we call whistleblowing and targeting the Cartel del Sol (the cartel in Venezuela). People need to understand that the cartel that operated out of Venezuela — led by Nicolás Maduro when he was captured — is a cartel worth $2.7 trillion. That's what they have stolen in oil money, drug sales, gold, and everything else. It's the largest transnational criminal organization in the history of the world. They make the Italian mafia look like pikers.

We were doing operations against them, collecting on their finances, and we kept stumbling into this company, Smartmatic — their employees and their involvement with the cartel. People were telling us things about it. Then, of course, in 2020 when the election was stolen, many of our sources came to us. They had contacts inside the Consejo Nacional Electoral (the National Electoral Council in Venezuela) and inside Smartmatic, and they explained pretty quickly who the players were and how they were doing this.

For the next two years, Martina and I traveled the world finding engineers that worked for the companies, recruiting them, bringing them on board, and debriefing them. They essentially laid out this conspiracy, which we found shocking.”

“Look, I was a senior officer in the CIA. I was one of the top guys in counterterrorism. I was in charge of the East Africa bombings, the Khobar Towers bombings, the invasion — I did a lot of stuff. But I was shocked by the scale of this and even more shocked by the fact that the Intelligence Community in the United States wasn't doing anything about it.

We went to them. We brought them information. We briefed them on the cartel early on. We actually briefed the Trump campaign about election theft before the 2024 election. We went to them in 2020. When the election was stolen, we went right to the campaign…”

This is the biggest espionage and cartel conspiracy in human history. Somebody should make a movie about this. It would beat any “Mission Impossible” or James Bond film. Absolutely chilling.

Summary of Video Transcript

Post by Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson), July 16, 2026

The post features a video interview/clip with retired senior CIA officer Gary Berntsen, who claims to have extensive operational experience (including leading the initial entry into Afghanistan post-9/11, placing Hamid Karzai in power, serving as chief of Hezbollah operations globally, and multiple chief of station roles in the Middle East and Latin America).

Core Claims in the Video/Post

Venezuelan Cartel and Election Interference: Berntsen describes the Maduro regime in Venezuela as running the largest transnational criminal organization in history — the "Cartel del Sol" — valued at $2.7 trillion from stolen oil, drugs, gold, etc. He and his partner Martin Rodil (via their business) conducted whistleblowing and intelligence operations against this cartel for about seven years.
Smartmatic Involvement: During these operations, they repeatedly encountered Smartmatic (an election technology company) and its employees linked to the Venezuelan cartel. After the 2020 U.S. election, sources from inside Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (Consejo Nacional Electoral) and Smartmatic provided details on how the system allegedly worked.
Investigation: Over the next two years, Berntsen and Rodil traveled globally, recruiting and debriefing engineers who had worked for the involved companies. These engineers allegedly detailed a conspiracy to manipulate elections. Berntsen calls this one of the biggest espionage and cartel operations in history — worthy of a major movie.
U.S. Government Inaction: Berntsen expresses shock that the U.S. Intelligence Community took no significant action despite being briefed. He and his partner provided information to the Trump campaign about potential election theft risks both before and after 2020. He notes he could not personally author the related book due to CIA publication review restrictions, so Ralph Pezzullo (co-author of Berntsen’s earlier book Jawbreaker) wrote it. The book is available on Amazon.

The post’s caption frames this as former CIA insiders exposing how American elections are allegedly stolen, with Venezuelan actors (via Smartmatic) playing a central role, and criticizes U.S. authorities for inaction. It calls the story "chilling" and mind-blowing.

Engagement and Context

High engagement: ~312k views, ~10k likes, thousands of reposts/bookmarks as of the fetch.
Replies in the thread include skepticism (e.g., one user arguing the real issues are domestic rather than foreign hacking) and related commentary tying it to broader geopolitical ties (e.g., Venezuela-China connections).

Note: The video itself is a ~28-minute clip (based on duration data) focused on this interview. The post text provides an extended, near-verbatim transcript/summary of Berntsen’s key statements. This aligns with ongoing narratives around election integrity concerns involving foreign actors and voting technology companies like Smartmatic (which has faced multiple lawsuits and scrutiny, though many claims have been litigated or debunked in courts). Berntsen positions himself as a credible insider blowing the whistle on systemic vulnerabilities.

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