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Updated on: October 6, 2026 / 3:25 PM EDT / CBS News

Washington — A former CIA official who was found with $40 million in gold bars in his home in May pleaded guilty on Tuesday, admitting he invented fake classified programs to divert nearly $200 million in government money that he used to buy Florida mansions and gold.

David Rush entered a guilty plea on a single count of wire fraud during a hearing in federal court in Virginia.

As part of his plea agreement, Rush agreed to forfeit at least $194 million, including 298 gold bars, two BMWs, 35 luxury watches and four luxury homes in Florida. He faces up to 20 years in prison.

In a filing known as a criminal information detailing the allegations Rush admitted to, prosecutors said he invented a fake classified program to steer $145 million in government funds through a front company, using the money to purchase the homes in Florida that he intended to resell for profit. Separately, he “fabricated a separate purported sensitive government activity to justify the acquisition of gold bars,” prosecutors said.

“Although the real estate and gold acquisitions involved different transactions and intermediaries, they were executions of the same overarching scheme — RUSH created false classified authorities, directed and approved the associated expenditures, caused contractors and subcontractors to carry out the transactions, and thereafter exercised possession or control over the acquired assets,” the filing said.

Prosecutors said Rush had access to “highly sensitive and classified government programs,” although the filing does not name the CIA as his former employer. The spy agency and FBI said previously that the investigation began when the CIA referred the matter to the bureau. In the affidavit supporting the original criminal complaint against him, he was described as a “former Senior Executive Service level employee” at a government agency in eastern Virginia.

The document said Rush caused an unidentified contractor known as Company 1 to transfer about $145 million to a holding company set up at his direction. He then instructed employees at that company and a subcontractor to route that money to a holding company that he controlled, and used the funds to purchase four properties in Palm Beach and Hobe Sound, Florida.

Rush was arrested in May. FBI agents found the gold bars, $2 million in cash and luxury watches when executing a search warrant at his home. Prosecutors said Tuesday that the holding company had about $38.6 million left in its account.

The gold bars were purchased after Rush told the unnamed contractors “that he was working on a Top-Secret project in which he had to deliver high-value commodities to unnamed individuals,” the information said. One of the contractors wired $45 million to the holding company in January, a transaction that forms the basis of the wire fraud charge.

Rush was originally charged with one count of stealing public money, with investigators saying he had provided false information about his education and military service on his government application, and fraudulently took military leave after his service ended.

In June, a federal judge ordered Rush to remain in custody as the case proceeded, determining that he posed a severe flight risk.

Trump signed an executive order Monday evening stateside to temporarily allow truckers and farmers to use red-dyed diesel — which is exempt from highway fuel taxes — and deferred related taxes on the fuel through the end of this year.

The tax-free diesel is typically used by farm equipment, construction machinery, trucks and other off-road vehicles. It is therefore exempt from a 24.4-cent-per-gallon tax applied to diesel fuel sold for highway transportation.

Simon Andriesz was found dead in a town just outside Bangkok on the morning of September 23.

The whistleblower had claimed his former employer Mr Lutnick – a key aide of Donald Trump – failed to disclose a business relationship with the paedophile financier.

The banker uncovered emails from 2018 which he claimed showed Mr Lutnick and Epstein were discussing a start-up business in which they had involvement.

Epstein died in prison one year later. The messages were exchanged a decade after the sex offender was convicted in 2008 for soliciting prostitution from a child.

The report said 189 people were being monitored following the illness of an employee at an anti-plague research institute in Irkutsk. Alexei Tsydenov, head of the nearby Republic of Buryatia, said the woman had died from an unspecified form of plague.

Russia’s public health watchdog, Rospotrebnadzor, said Sunday that the employee had been diagnosed with “pneumonia of unknown etiology” and that the sanitary and epidemiological situation in the Irkutsk region and the cities of Irkutsk and Shelekhov remained stable.

Overview Energy secured the contract through the Operational Energy Capability Improvement Fund (OECIF). The company announced the project on Wednesday, September 30.

The technology will allow the firm’s satellites to identify and authenticate receiver sites on the ground. Once a site is confirmed, the satellites could lock onto it and precisely beam energy from orbit to Earth. That said, satellites in geosynchronous orbit could receive sunlight around the clock.

The sudden withdrawal came a week after a major incident was declared near Fairford following the arrest of five men on suspicion of driving bomb-laden vans toward it. They were later released on bail after no explosives were found. However, Counter-Terrorism police are continuing the investigation and said they were considering ?whether a foreign ?state had ?been involved. On Wednesday, British Prime Minister Andy Burnham said the incident might have had an Iranian ?link.

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The U.S. withdrew all 12 B-1s “after commanders received new threats about an Iran-backed plot against the installation,” The New York Times reported, citing two U.S. officials.

“The withdrawal was highly unusual: Such moves are rarely made so quickly from an allied air base in a peacetime country thousands of miles from a combat zone,” the publication added. “The need to move the bombers out of the base, R.A.F. Fairford, was deemed so urgent that some of the planes and their flight crews left while aerial refueling aircraft were still being scrambled to support their flights to the United States. At least three of the planes had landed at their home base in South Dakota by Sunday.”

U.S. officials declined to tell the Times the specific nature of the new information that prompted the Lancer withdrawal, some of which had just arrived in the past week as part of a normal rotation of forces to maintain the B-1 forward presence in Europe.

The official told Al Jazeera that the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group left its San Diego base on Sunday, bound for the region, followed a day later by the Makin Island Marine Expeditionary Force, carrying more than 2,000 Marines.

Rioters have unleashed chaos in major cities across the country after what started as largely peaceful demonstrations against the state of education descended into violent chaos.

Protests began last Monday, when students and teaching staff took to French towns and cities to demand the replacement of absent teachers, an increase of educational resources, school renovations and ‘decent’ learning conditions.

But disorder has spread since Tuesday with some 600 arrests and 85 police officers wounded.