An interesting arrest that might warrant some background material prior to today’s events. Keep in mind there are several indicted individuals from Venezuela and Mexico now said to be cooperating with the DOJ and federal law enforcement.
In addition to former Venezuela dictator Nicolas Maduro in the Southern District of New York, we should also note three Mexican officials connected to the Sinaloa cartel previously turned themselves in to U.S. federal officials and are said to be cooperating.
Earlier this month, Gerardo Mérida, a retired Mexican army general who served as public-security secretary in northwestern Sinaloa state surrendered in Tucson, Arizona. Enrique Inzunza Cazárez, who is also facing drug trafficking and weapon charges, was taken into custody in San Diego by the DEA. Sinaloa businessman Enrique Diaz Vega – another name from the SDNY indictment – also turned himself into U.S. authorities in Arizona.
As you read this story, also keep in mind the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency, falls under the authority of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, and that agency oversees a background check program, known as “continuous vetting.”
According to NBC News a 20-year veteran manger within the CIA named David Rush has been arrested on suspicion of embezzlement and theft. The CIA operative was reported to have been referred to the FBI by CIA Director John Ratcliffe.
(VIA NBC) WASHINGTON — A former CIA senior officer with top secret-level clearance has been accused of secretly stashing millions of dollars in gold bars in his home that he said he needed for “work-related expenses,” according to court documents and two people familiar with his employment history.
David Rush, who held a management position, was charged with criminal theft of public money in a complaint filed last week in the Eastern District of Virginia. His lawyer didn’t respond to a request for comment. He was also accused of lying to his employers about his background for nearly two decades.
Asked about Rush’s case, a CIA spokesperson said in a statement joint statement with the FBI that the FBI had arrested a person after a referral from the agency.
“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 written statement said. “The FBI is working closely with our partners at the CIA and the Department of Justice as we continue to investigate this matter fully. We are committed to following the facts, ensuring accountability, and pursuing justice in accordance with the law.”
[…] It wasn’t clear how the investigation into Rush began, and it also wasn’t clear when he left the CIA. His home was raided just last week.
From November through March, Rush made several requests for funds, including for foreign currency and tens of millions of dollars in gold bars, according to an affidavit filed in federal court by an FBI agent investigating the case.
In a storage space near his office, investigators found only a portion of the funds. On May 18, federal agents searched Rush’s home and seized roughly 300 gold bars worth more than $40 million, court documents said. Agents also seized about $2 million in U.S. currency and 35 luxury watches, mostly Rolexes, according to the affidavit.
The affidavit alleges Rush knowingly took part of the money he requested for work-related expenses to his home for personal gain.
The court filing didn’t specify which agency employed Rush, but the two people familiar with his employment history said he was with the CIA. (link)
Separate allegations in the complaint accuse Rush of falsifying his background over nearly two decades in dealings with government employers.

Co-workers suspected nothing when he was pushing the heavy-duty hand cart out the door and to his Ford F350 King Ranch edition pickup. //sarcasm
Oopsie.
Rush knowingly took part of the money he requested for work-related expenses to his home for personal gain.
Say it ain’t so. I’m sure there’s a rush on shovels at the Home Depot in Langley, Virginia.
Why not look closely at those watches, and compare them to every single foreign dignitary photo in the public sphere. Something tells me they aren’t random Rolexes.
IIRC, Rolexes have serial numbers. Just check with Rolex to see if they’re genuine.
….and, it is probably only the “tip of the iceberg”
Clowns In Action. Langley employee busted for laundering cartel money. I’m shocked!
Can we audit Fort Knox now?
It’s empty. Auric Goldfinger told me so 😂
Since they classify everything, and all of it is buried in these silos that SD has described, “tip of the iceberg” in all likelihood understates the problem by many orders of magnitude.
Oh–well, if it’s work-related, never mind.
Meh…about as much scrutiny for a missing gross of #2 pencils and a case of Post-It Notes.
More proof our income tax is triple theft
Abolish it
🎯
It’s no coincidence that putting The and IRS together spells THEIRS
Very astute
Hear! Hear! Defund the fraud. Dismantle the system that redistributes our coerced tax payments.
From November through March, Rush made several requests for funds, including for foreign currency and tens of millions of dollars in gold bars, and somebody approved it all and handed it over to him, for what reason? Is this the normal functioning of CIA dirty money black ops where they pay traitors and terrorists in gold bars to do the wet work?
How many more names were offered up by Maduro and the Mexican?
How many Uniparty ?
That is a very interesting question. Several of these high-value targets would be happy to sell out any number of corrupt gringos in exchange for more favorable sentencing terms. There’s no need to publicly reveal if this is in fact the case. This must be causing high stress levels amongst the corrupt.
More Congressmen than not.
Isn’t this what an IG is supposed to root out, and why isn’t this agency overseen by someone in congress? Maybe a committee?
Theatre-the-Potomac brought to you by the Sternly Worded Letters and Angry Soundbites Congressional Actors Guild.///
If President Trump ordered a poly and intensive financial disclosure for the SES, half would resign and the other half would flee the country.
Nice to see you comment, been a long time.
Thanks.
I want to know what “work related” expenses the CIA approved that required payment in gold bars?
Fort Knox = Langley VA
He was given cash and he acquired the gold bars from Costco.
I would like to see the signed off request(s) for all of that work related loot.
With that kind of creative writing he should be able to write some pretty good novels.
Unless requesting gold bars and cash for work related expenses within the CIA is so common it’s become the norm and no one bats an eyelash at such a request. Which means there are a lot of other Rush’s in the organization.
37 trillion in debt. Makes you think.
Weapons deals, drug deals, people deals (including buying heads of state), container-ship level cargo deals. Lots of stuff. Hell, in 2001 they had their Special Activities Division guys running around northern Afghanistan with rucksacks loaded to the gills with cash & whatever it took to buy a warlord and his army.
No, you don’t want to know.
Stole valor to boot. This guy is despicable.
Imagine a department that is supposed to be really really great at gathering information failing to figure out that he did not graduate from college for a bachelor’s nor an advanced degree and he was not ever a pilot for the US Navy.
Makes you wonder how many others are also hoarding gold bars?
Maybe he was just concerned about inflation? 😄 The Rolex watches will be hard to explain though. A standard Casio tells time accurately and batteries last for years.
A Casio watch with bog standard quartz movement is so, shall I say, plebeian.
Comparatively inexpensive and simply works.
Casio watches and Glock pistols. They don’t do anything but work.
The Rolex’s are understandable. One for each day of the month, while others are out of the rotation for cleaning. Every well-appointed technocrat knows this best practice! 🙂
And actually the luxury watches are the Agency’s version of the Military Challenge Coins….
Makes me think of the original Pink Panther movie. (My leaky memory not an exact quote.)
“Inspector Clouseau, how does your wife afford mink coats on an inspector’s pay?”
“My wife… she is very frugal. She saves out of the housekeeping money”
“Shot in the Dark”, best movie…
Brings a whole new meaning to Hedge Fund doesn’t it.
Hey! Wait a minute! Those 35 Rolexes are MINE. He said he wanted to buy ONE but couldn’t make up his mind so I left all of them with him to make a decision. I demand they all be returned immediately. Pretty please. You can keep the one made in China.
So certain Clowns In Action can request millions upon millions of dollars and gold bars for their work ?
How completely F**ked up is this and if he did this you can bet he is not alone just like those who flew pallets of cash into Ukraine and Syria and Iraq and on and on and on.
The piggy bank is robbed on a regular basis by thousands and thousands of government crooks.
Those bureaucrats are members of labor unions. Hundreds of different unions for different kinds of bureaucrats. Even the judges are unionized. All the union dues are paid into the coffers of AFSCME and AFLCIO. JFK signed EXEC ORDER #10988 in 1962. Communist union lawyers have been organizing ever since. Labor unions are a communist operation in the United States.
All I care is how well he can sing, and how many verses.
As he is being held out of a chopper feet first.
Perhaps he can just be let go.
Ba-da-bing!
Better! Take 2 of them up for interrogation. Start asking questions. When neither answers…kick one of them Out…the other sings!
Worked in Nam I heard
No, it would be better with him being held out of the chopper HEAD FIRST.
Looks like Rush operated with a false sense of impunity for the longest time, with little fear of ever getting caught.
Would not be a surprise to ultimately learn that he is the tip of the proverbial Iceberg. And a mighty big Iceberg at that.
Sounds like this was the guy who delivered the bribes.
If he sings like a canary, his song will be a hit.
he’ll suicide himself in Fort Marcy park with two holes in the back of the head.
Arkancide.
He requested tens of millions in gold bars and they gave it to him?
End all agencies
Agree! Repeal the Federal Income tax and shrink the Federal government back to its Constitutionally-mandated scope, size, and cost.
Can’t blame the guy for asking!
I bet he was on the FBI’s radar.
A lone wolf…
With that kind of money he could be a loan wolf.
Sounds to me that the “continuous vetting.”, was in reality “continuous Cor_vetting”
The canaries are singing.
Let’s not forget Mudoro sent 22 million in suitcases up for BLM to pay all the Radicals who were killing and burning cities down.
How many individuals got suitcases or other forms of payment ?
I’d like to know if any of these assets found their way into politicians pockets, election funds or PAC’s?
And obviously, if so, then whose?
We truly need DOGE to run their algorithms through every nook and cranny of the lettered agencies, AND DON’T FORGET DARPA!!!
where is DOGE? will it return? those folks were doing great work!
Where is Big Balls?
Or nab a cartel accountant. Those fellows have records that can lead to payoffs north of the border.
Vasili Mitrokhin served as an archivist for the KGB and took a phenomenal amount of records that he collected for years before defecting in 1992. Replicating this kind of success in the narco war would be seismic.
CIA has 75+ years of dirty laundry.
And they needed all that gold for those expensive coin-op laundries.
Amateur compared to what Soetero and the Clintoons have hauled away. Where there’s smoke there’s fire and this baby is a raging inferno.
So I wake up this morning to the tune of the CIA complaining about losing their coveted In-Q-Tel high tech firm to the ODNI and I go to bed with the CIA employing an employee who is squirreling away gold bars to the tune of 40 million plus.
Looks like it’s a good thing they are losing the oversight of the precious high tech firm.
I bet that it is going to end up being more than just one CIA employee.
It’s enough to make a Somalian Fraudster jealous.
Where do I begin? From watching and reading the public news from many sources over the last year and a half, I have come to the conclusion that if the STOLEN American Taxpayer money from USAID, the money paid to ILLEGAL ALIENS by our government, the money paid under the table to our corrupt politicians, the money WASTED by giving it to countries that hate our guts, and on and on, we, the American Taxpayer, would no longer need to pay taxes, and the National Debt would be paid off in a couple or three years. Does that sound about right to you?
If Justice were done, we would get restitution sevenfold greater than what was stolen from all of us.
Considering this is most likely exceeding nine digits and possibly even ten, it is going to be a stupifying amount of money.
Yes. The money stolen from us to be used for fraud and theft should be repaid to us plus whatever we would have made investing it in a boom stock market.
I cannot despise these people enough.
Dang, and I just noticed I was off by whole orders of magnitude.
Guess I can’t count that well tonight with what else I was working on taking much of my attention.
Harry, I’d say you are absolutely spot on. Our tax money is just used to fill a giant piggy bank for the corrupt to steal from at will.
Seems to me this humble government employee was really into taking his work home with him!
Gold bars are not liquid. He must of had means to dispose of them through gold brokers. Shenanigans all around.
you mean a gold broker who will buy and cell gold and silver without records SOP
I do not remember the box on my expense reimbursement forms for $40 million in gold bars.
“……..a 20-year veteran manger within the CIA named David Rush has been arrested on suspicion of embezzlement and theft.”
Is this guy the big fish in a little pond, or is this case just the tip of the embezzlement iceberg?
Ummm, are there no cameras monitoring the area the Gold Bars are contained in?
Can we also find out what operation the CIA was going to use those $40 MM in gold bars for???
What did John Brennen know, and when did he know it.
Btw, as an aside, whatever happened to the counting of the Gold Bars at Fort Knox? Trump and I believe Elon and his team were going to be part of checking into?
This is part of real swamp draining, from the defunding of USAID to the fraud squad that VP is heading up, to the work the likes of Nick Shirley are doing in exposing learing centers and the Somalia connection, what we’re hearing about with the Hospice frauds and government employees stealing , not just federal but State governments too – these are foundational swamp clearings.
And it’s interesting while all this is going on the Democrat party is in the red financial-wise.
Ok I will bite….
What does a CIA agent who requests a bunch of cash and gold have to do with the Mexican Cartel dudes who may be flipping to help the Justice dept?
I am having trouble tying the threads together.
My guess is that he was up to his eyeballs in selling out this country to foreign adversaries. The video that Sundance posted mid-page in the comment section says that he lied about college, advanced degree, and being a Navy pilot.
Maybe he was planted by higher ups and gave them a piece of the action or maybe the CIA was really really stupid about doing background checks on employees.
Who do you think controls the drug flow around the world?
Get a rope
I “used to have” a TS/NAC/BI clearance and “almost” went to work post-military days for an “alphabet soup” department of the government.
IMO, Maduro is spilling his guts and dropping dimes on folks in hopes for a “lighter result” re: the crimes he’s been accused of and the potential hard-time he’s looking at … And now we’re seeing the results of his “Come to Jesus” moments.
Obviously, I don’t know for certain, but that’s how this stuff works …
Does anyone here think he is the only one?????????