Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) has referred to as for a long-overdue audit of the U.S. gold reserves at Fort Knox—one thing that hasn’t occurred in almost 50 years.
The demand comes as issues develop over whether or not the 4,580 tons of U.S. gold supposedly saved in Fort Knox nonetheless exist or if bureaucrats and the Federal Reserve have been partaking in monetary sleight-of-hand behind closed doorways.
The decision for transparency gained momentum when conservative information outlet Zero Hedge sparked debate on X, posting:
“It will be nice if @elonmusk may have a look inside Fort Knox simply to ensure the 4,580 tons of US gold is there. Final time anybody seemed was 50 years in the past in 1974.”
Musk rapidly responded:
“Absolutely it’s reviewed at the least yearly?”
To which Rand Paul fired again with a reality bomb:
“Nope. Let’s do it.”
Nope. Let’s do it. https://t.co/4sgVpaCwwz
— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) February 16, 2025
What’s Actually Inside Fort Knox?
The final recognized “audit” of Fort Knox’s gold came about in 1986.
The newest complete audit of the U.S. gold reserves at Fort Knox started in 1974 and continued till 1986, throughout which roughly 97% of the gold was audited and positioned below official joint seals.
A authorities committee, consisting of auditors from the Normal Accounting Workplace (GAO), the U.S. Treasury, and the Bureau of the Mint, performed the evaluation.
On the time, officers claimed the U.S. held 276 million positive troy ounces of gold throughout varied federal depositories, with the biggest stash—147.4 million ounces—saved at Fort Knox.
Because the conclusion of the 1974–1986 audit, there have been no additional complete audits of the Fort Knox gold reserves.
A Freedom of Info Act (FOIA) request geared toward acquiring all audit stories from this era revealed that seven of those essential paperwork are reportedly unaccounted for.
The lacking audit stories got here to mild following a Freedom of Info Act (FOIA) request submitted by researcher Koos Jansen of Bullion Star. The request aimed to acquire all audit documentation from the required interval. Nonetheless, the Treasury Division was unable to provide seven of those stories.
In response to Jansen, 7 out of 13 audit stories from 1974-1986 are lacking and couldn’t be obtained by FOIA requests. The Workplace of Inspector Normal, liable for gold audits, solely had entry to 4 of the 13 stories.
Jansen wrote in 2015:
On February 25, 2015, I submitted a FOIA request so as to acquire the audit stories drafted by the Persevering with Audits Of U.S.-Owned Gold committee in 1975, 1976, 1978, 1979, 1982, 1983 and 1984. Shortly after I obtained an electronic mail that said my request had been acquired and was being processed.
Two months later I nonetheless obtained no response. Once I logged in at my account on the FOIA web site, I noticed my request had disappeared. I made a decision to ship an electronic mail to the FOIA on-line Assist Desk to ask what occurred to my request.
[…]
After some correspondence forwards and backwards I lastly obtained an electronic mail saying my FOIA was exported out of FOIAonline as a result of my request was for entry to historic information. Then, the official response from the offline division to my request I acquired on Might 13 as a PDF attachment (click on right here to view) – oddly sufficient it’s dated ‘March 25, 2015’ however not despatched to me on the time. That is what it mentioned:
To your info, we contacted a librarian on the Treasury Division who knowledgeable us that “stories from ‘Committee for Persevering with Audit of the U.S. Authorities-owned Gold’…will not be in our assortment.” And we tried to contact a information administration officer on the Treasury Division, however didn’t obtain a reply as of the date of this letter. Given the date vary of your request 1975-1984, the character of the report —an annual audit of gold, and the truth that stories of comparable sort have been periodically revealed on the Web, it’s possible that copies and drafts of those stories are within the authorized and bodily custody of the Division of the Treasury. You might contemplate submitting a FOIA request on to the Treasury Division.
In brief, the US Nationwide Archives couldn’t extradite the 7 audit stories I requested. The stories weren’t current on the Nationwide Archives, the OIG or on the Treasury Division. I doubt an try and “submitting a FOIA request on to the Treasury Division” will carry me something; possible it will likely be a waste of time as I had already contacted all attainable authorities departments individually, which couldn’t ship me the stories I used to be in search of regardless of none of them was unwilling to assist me. I’ll, nevertheless, submit a few new FOIA’s on the US authorities relating to gold audits.
The stories I did discover, and are actually publicly accessible, are:
Coincidentally, or not, these stories are precisely the identical ones as listed by Thorson on the congressional listening to in 2011 (exhibit 1, framed in purple). It appears these 6 stories (5 paperwork) are the one ones “at present in existence” and the remaining 7 have mysteriously disappeared.
You possibly can learn the detailed report on this at Bullion Star.
In 2021, Former Rep. Alex Mooney (R-WV) proposed a invoice geared toward auditing America’s gold reserves. The laws sought a complete assay, stock, and audit of all U.S. gold holdings, in addition to detailed reporting on all gold transactions involving the U.S.
“Given the dramatic ranges of debt-financed spending by the federal authorities and the potential this might set off an inflationary nightmare, guaranteeing America’s gold reserves are each safe and totally accounted for has by no means been extra vital,” wrote Rep. Mooney in his letter.
“On the similar time, Russia and China are presently accumulating bodily gold at a charge that specialists consider may quickly threaten the monetary dominance of the USA and, by extension, our nationwide safety,” Mooney continued.
This invoice remains to be sitting in Congress.
