A Navy veteran and former CIA employee whose home was found to contain $40 million in gold bars following an FBI raid earlier this year has reached a tentative plea agreement with federal prosecutors.
David Rush has not been charged with stealing the gold, and it’s not exactly clear how he obtained it. He remains in custody charged with falsifying his timesheets to wrongfully claim some $77,000 in military leave.
On Friday, Rush’s attorney and prosecutors told a Virginia district court judge more time was needed to complete paperwork related to the plea deal, court records show.
A pre-indictment resolution of the case would better serve the “ends of justice,” given the sizable logistical issues to be confronted in dealing with classified information at trial, Rush’s attorney and prosecutors argued in the filing.
“The parties have made significant progress and have a plea agreement in principle that would resolve the matter prior to an indictment,” they said in the filing approved by a federal judge.
The exact charges in the plea agreement and any potential sentence remain unclear. Rush and the prosecution have until Oct. 8 to iron out the plea agreement details, including a statement of facts.
Rush’s attorney, Jessica Carmichael, declined Thursday to comment on the case.
Court documents have identified Rush only as a senior executive service-level employee with a top secret/secure compartmented information clearance at a U.S. government agency.
The New York Times reported Friday that Rush was a senior employee in the CIA’s science and technology division. At the time of his arrest on May 19, he was at work on highly classified programs for the CIA and the Pentagon, according to the Times report.
In a May 20 court filing, an FBI agent said the agency had found 303 gold bars weighing about 2 pounds each, some $2 million in cash and 35 luxury watches during a search of Rush’s home. The filing did not establish how Rush came to possess the items.
In his high-level position, Rush made repeated requests from November 2025 through March to the agency for a significant amount of foreign currency and tens of millions of dollars in gold bars for related work expenses, the FBI agent said in the filing.
A subsequent review of storage space at his office revealed a small portion of the money, and his employer was unable to find a significant amount of the currency or the gold bars or identify how they were used, the agent said.
In the eight-page statement, the FBI agent also detailed that an investigation revealed that Rush falsified his education and Navy service records, including saying he was a pilot, in applications for a job with his government employer.
Rush, who was honorably discharged from the Navy Reserve in 2015 as a lieutenant, also told his employer he was a captain in the Navy Reserve through at least September 2025.
“The FBI’s investigation has revealed that Rush provided false information about his education and military service on his application to the (U.S. government) and fraudulently took military leave after he separated from the military,” the agent said.
Rush enlisted in the Navy in 1997, then was commissioned as an ensign in the Navy Reserve in 2004.
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