A former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) official is accused of hiding a mountain of treasure inside his Virginia home, where federal officials conducted a raid.
The suspect, David Rush, allegedly had 303 gold bars worth $40 million, $2 million in cash, and numerous luxury Rolex watches, most or all of which he had reportedly requested for “work-related expenses,” the New York Post said Wednesday.
During a routine audit, the CIA realized the assets were missing and called in investigators with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
The FBI said:
After a CIA internal investigation identified potential violations of the law, CIA Director John Ratcliffe referred the information to the FBI for a law enforcement investigation. The FBI is working closely with our partners at the CIA and the Department of Justice as we continue to investigate this matter fully.
Rush was charged with criminal theft of public money. He is also accused of lying to his employers about his background, NBC News reported Wednesday. The outlet said it remained unclear when Rush left the agency.
The NBC article continued:
Rush applied to work with the government three times; in his first application, he said he graduated from Clemson University in 2000. In his second application, he added that he had a graduate degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
On his third try, in 2009, he succeeded, and he included those degrees and an aircraft test from the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School, according to court documents. In applications for promotions, he said he’d been a thesis adviser at the Air Force Institute of Technology. Rush also told employers he was a pilot for the Navy.
However, the charges allege none of those details about him were true. The Post article said the suspect, who is currently in federal custody, was honorably discharged from the U.S. Navy in 2015 and “allegedly falsified active status as a captain to pocket $77,000 in unearned military leave while drawing an inflated executive salary.”
A source close to the White House told Breitbart News in January that CIA Director John Ratcliffe has become President Donald Trump’s “quiet hammer.”
“He goes in, accomplishes whatever mission the president gave him, then disappears back into the shadows. The agency seems to have adopted the same approach, so Trump actually deserves credit for turning the CIA into an instrument of America First power,” the person said.
In April, Trump and Ratcliffe detailed the high-risk rescue in Iran when American forces, aided by a CIA-led “deception campaign,” located and saved a wounded airman hiding in a mountain crevice after his F-15E Strike Eagle was shot down and he escaped being captured by the enemy, per Breitbart News.
“Trump credited Director Ratcliffe and the CIA with playing a decisive role in locating the airman, describing the intelligence effort as central to the mission’s success,” the report stated.
