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A former CIA officer in Virginia who is accused of taking tens of millions of dollars in gold bars and foreign currency from the agency was ordered Friday to remain in jail until his trial.
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The man, David Rush, has been charged with one count of theft of public money. His lawyers argued Friday that the gold bars were all accounted for and the current charges are related to what they equated to time-card fraud.
The FBI alleges Rush became a senior executive government employee with top-secret clearance by lying repeatedly on applications about his military service and education and falsely saying he was a Navy pilot and had advanced degrees.
Questions remain as to how an agency that claims to be one of the top spy apparatuses in the world failed to account for the money or catch Rush’s many allegedly false claims on four different applications reviewed by the agency.
Several lower level CIA employees have been placed on leave and other more senior officers were reassigned over how they managed Rush’s requests for money or failing to catch initial internal flags that his requests may not have been a legitimate part of his work, according to a source familiar with the matter.
CNN has reached out to CIA for comment.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe, alongside acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel, have briefed top lawmakers on Capitol Hill and President Donald Trump on the case, four sources familiar with the meetings told CNN.
According to the FBI affidavit filed in the case, Rush began making requests for tens of millions of dollars’ worth of gold bars as well as a significant amount of foreign currency between November, 2025 and March, 2026.
Investigators have not said what Rush proposed to do with the funds in his requests or why the funds were approved.
The CIA, which reviewed the matter before referring it to the FBI, could not find the gold given to Rush or a large amount of the foreign currency they provided.
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According to the affidavit, the FBI then executed a search warrant on Rush’s home and found over $40 million in gold bars as well as $2 million in US cash and 35 luxury watches.
From 2006 to 2009, Rush allegedly lied on three separate applications to join the CIA about his education background — falsely claiming he obtained a bachelor’s and master’s degree.
Seven years after he was hired on false pretenses, Rush again lied, according to the FBI’s affidavit, when applying to become a senior executive at the CIA.
In the 2018 application, Rush falsely claimed he had been a Navy pilot, had tenure at the Air Force Institute of Technology and served “as the current Director of Test for a 145-person, 18-aircraft joint Army/Navy weapons test organization,” according to the affidavit.
The FBI says Rush enlisted in the Navy in 1997, serving as an information systems technician, and joined the reserves in 2004. He was never a pilot, the affidavit says.
While being employed in the CIA, Rush falsely claimed 744 hours of military leave and received $77,000 in compensation after he was honorably discharged in 2015.
The single charge he faces appears to hinge on the military leave payments he received after being discharged, though additional charges could be added as investigators continue to probe Rush’s retention of the gold bars and the missing foreign currency.
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This story is developing and will be updated.