Did Iran, China and Russia fund BLM? What the July 2026 declassified documents actually say

Claim: On The Benny Show episode "What Trump Secretly Just Did With Spanish World Cup Champions Will Cause An INTERNATIONAL Incident…🤣" (20 July 2026), Benny Johnson said US intelligence documents released the week before showed Iran, China and Russia were "behind BLM" and that BLM, Antifa and "defund the police" were "funded by China and Iran."

Verdict: false (truth score 0.08, confidence 0.80). The documents describe a Chinese plan to exploit racial tension that already existed. In no account we read do they put Russia or Iran behind any protest movement, show any funding, or name BLM.

We start with the strongest case for the claim. The 16–17 July release does discuss race and protest. CSIS reports that China's planned themes included "racial tension" and "police-community tensions." The Federalist quotes a 2020 agency summary describing Chinese aims of "inciting demonstrations and marches as evidence of racial divides." The Epoch Times quotes a National Intelligence Council judgment that Chinese government elements "may have directed or conducted" a covert campaign to incite protests. That part is real, and our own earlier summary understated it.

The claim still fails on each of its five parts. Russia and Iran appear only in a line about election infrastructure. CSIS says the materials "do not reference Black Lives Matter, funding mechanisms, or coordination with Iran or Russia." CSIS also says it is "unclear from the available data whether China actually executed on the plans." No money moves to any movement in any account we read, including the most favourable ones. Former intelligence official Brian O'Neill notes that declassification "does not determine whether the information is true." The documented foreign role also points the other way: Russia's Internet Research Agency ran accounts on both sides, and its biggest Facebook ad promoted "Blue Lives Matter."

We also trace how the claim grew. A partisan headline turned "racial tension" into "BLM riots." A captioned screenshot followed. Then, over a few days, the same show moved from "behind" to "funded with hundreds of millions of dollars" to "run out of Cuba, China, Iran, Russia." The list of states changed each time and the conclusion never did. We track this pattern as the hidden-hand thread (authorship transfer).

What we still don't know: our quotes from the documents come through secondary reporting, and we have not confirmed whether "BLM" appears anywhere in the release. We also don't know whether China carried out the plan, or what document the host showed on screen.