A former top Trump intelligence official says she quit last month because she refused to keep approving the spy agencies’ secret movement of cash and gold bullion.
Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, 45, is the daughter-in-law of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and one of the most senior figures to walk out of the administration’s national security ranks.
A former CIA officer, she held three jobs at once—as deputy director of national intelligence, a seat on the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, and an associate director role at the Office of Management and Budget overseeing the spending of the CIA and 17 other agencies.
That latter role is what she now says drove her out. “I couldn’t keep signing the checks,” she told The Wall Street Journal. “I would have become complicit.”
“Until there’s functional oversight of the IC’s ample and unsupervised movement of money and gold, we are stuck living in something less than the constitutional republic our founders designed,” she added.
Kennedy announced her resignation last month and cited family reasons at the time. The deeper explanation has only now emerged. She told the Journal that she pulled the plug once it became clear certain agencies were stonewalling elected leaders over how they move money.
Her account directly contradicts the version first reported by the Washington Post, which cited sources saying she left in part because she opposed President Donald Trump’s war with Iran. Kennedy dismissed that as inaccurate. She praised Trump for “future-proofing” against a longer conflict and eliminating “the seed of a future full-blown war” without committing ground troops.
Kennedy’s exit comes alongside the arrest of David Rush, a 17-year CIA veteran, after FBI investigators say they found more than 300 gold bars worth at least $40 million inside his home in Ashburn, Virginia. Rush allegedly obtained large amounts of foreign cash and tens of millions of dollars’ worth of gold bars, which an FBI affidavit says were for “work-related expenses.”
Kennedy called the Rush case emblematic of a broader rot, arguing that unelected officials are trampling the lawmakers supposed to control taxpayer money. She declined to give specifics, citing national security. A person familiar with her dealings with the CIA told the Journal they couldn’t recall her ever raising gold bullion directly with senior figures at the agency.
The CIA branded her allegations “totally false,” with a spokeswoman telling the Journal that it tells its oversight committees everything they need to know, and that an internal investigation under Director John Ratcliffe exposed “decadeslong fraud and misconduct” across multiple government bodies.
Career officers are rattled regardless. Marc Polymeropoulos, a former senior CIA officer who ran covert operations across Europe, said he had paid sources large sums during his career but never in gold, speculating the bars could have been a stash for untraceable payments.
Kennedy is keeping her seat on the intelligence advisory board and has left the door open to a full-time return. “I’ll be first in line to come back and serve full time,” she told the Journal, if there were ever a genuine appetite to root out domestic political abuses.
The Daily Beast has contacted the CIA, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and Amaryllis Fox Kennedy for comment.
