Flight risk: judge orders remand for CIA official accused of storing $40 million in gold bullion in his home

A top official at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) charged with defrauding the federal government will remain jailed until his trial begins after a judge in Virginia concluded that his professional profile makes him a highly likely flight candidate.

The decision comes after agents found more than $40 million in gold bullion stashed in the basement of his home.

U.S. Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick ruled Friday that the defendant, David J. Rush, has both the means and the reasons to escape while the trial is ongoing, AP reported. The magistrate noted that Rush's background gives him a rare advantage in evading authorities.

"He's in a different position than most people to flee and avoid detection by law enforcement," the judge said.

The charge he faces so far—fraudulently claiming tens of thousands of dollars in compensation for military leave—pales in comparison to the fortune in gold that prompted the raid. Rush was honorably discharged from the U.S. Navy in 2015, and his arrest last month resulted in the seizure of more than 300 bars, nearly $2 million in cash and some 35 luxury watches, according to the affidavit of an FBI agent.

The defense sought to downplay the weight of the gold find during the hearing. Attorney Jessica Carmichael argued that her client faces no charges for those bars, which she called "basically a non-issue" and "nothing more than a sensational tidbit." According to his version, Rush obtained the gold through legitimate channels and kept it under lock and key in a safe at his home. "Mr. Rush never claimed they were his," he argued.

The prosecution, on the other hand, insisted that the underlying problem is the former official's conduct. Between November and March, Rush requested and received a substantial amount of foreign currency and tens of millions of dollars in gold under the guise of covering "work-related expenses," according to the FBI. The prosecutor for the Department of Justice Gavin Tisdale noted that those assets did not have to end up in a private residence. "That's the issue — his skirting of rules and regulations," he said.

After part of the hearing was held behind closed doors, Tisdale gave a summary of the case in open court and asserted that the evidence against Rush is becoming robust on a daily basis. "Mr. Rush simply cannot be trusted to abide by this court's conditions," he posited to the magistrate.

The case came to light in May, when, according to The New York Times, the CIA itself alerted the FBI after detecting possible irregularities in an internal investigation, prompting its director, John Ratcliffe, to refer the file to the federal office. The search of the house made it possible to find the gold that the agency had not been able to locate when it tried to verify the whereabouts of those funds.

The indictment is compounded by doubts about the former official's background. Authorities allege that Rush lied on job applications about his education and his time in the military, presenting himself as an ex-Navy pilot who graduated with a bachelor's degree from Clemson University in South Carolina and a master's degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York.

Investigators concluded that Rush never practiced as a naval pilot or attended either of those two institutions.