The FBI arrested David Rush, a former senior CIA official, at his home in Virginia in May, according to the Wall Street Journal. Investigators recovered more than 300 gold bars with a total value exceeding $40 million. The Journal reported that the gold bars were allegedly taken from the CIA and intended for work-related expenses. Rush has not been charged in connection with the gold, the newspaper said.
The case has drawn attention to the classified nature of the CIA’s budget, which is not publicly disclosed. The agency’s operations sometimes involve the movement of large sums of cash and other assets, though the discovery of such a large quantity of gold bars in a suburban home has raised questions about internal controls.
Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, the daughter-in-law of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., told the Journal she recently resigned from her position at the White House Office of Management and Budget, where she played a senior role in matters related to the intelligence community’s budget. She said her resignation was partly driven by discomfort with what she described as runaway spending, including on gold.
“Until there’s functional oversight of the IC’s ample and unsupervised movement of money and gold, we are stuck living in something less than the constitutional republic our founders designed,” Kennedy said in the interview.
Kennedy’s comments come amid broader debates in Washington over congressional oversight of intelligence activities. The House this week voted to restrict the Trump administration’s ability to continue the war against Iran without congressional approval, in a sign that some Republican lawmakers are pushing back on executive branch autonomy in national security matters. The CIA did not respond to requests for comment.