Rand Paul Suggests DOGE Help Audit Fort Knox Gold Reserves

Like his father before him, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is pushing for an audit of the gold reserves at the United States bullion depository at Fort Knox in Kentucky. He proposed that the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has been scrutinizing various aspects of the federal bureaucracy, help in the endeavor.

Over the weekend, the X account for ZeroHedge suggested technology executive Elon Musk, who is overseeing the DOGE effort, “take a look inside Fort Knox just to make sure the 4,580 tons of US gold is there.” Musk responded, asking, “Surely it’s reviewed at least every year?” Paul then replied to Musk, saying, “Nope. Let’s do it.”

According to the United States Mint website, Fort Knox has 147.3 million ounces of gold holdings. It says roughly half of the Treasury’s “stored gold (as well as valuables of other federal agencies)” is kept there. The website also notes the gold is held as an asset of the United States at a book value of $42.22 per ounce and only “very small quantities” have been removed for purity testing “during regularly scheduled audits. Except for these samples, no gold has been transferred to or from the Depository for many years.”

Fort Knox broke from its “strict no visitors policy” in 1974 to allow journalists and a congressional delegation into its vaults to view the gold reserves, the U.S. Mint noted, adding the Treasury Secretary “allows the visit when rumors persist that all the gold had been removed from the vaults” and previously, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was the only person other than authorized personnel to access the vaults.

During an interview on Fox News over the weekend, Paul talked about how he has tried to gain access to the Fort Knox gold vaults for a decade and missed his opportunity in 2017 when the bullion depository opened for a second time for then-Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin, and congressional representatives.

“I’ve been trying to go down and see the gold and make sure it’s all there for about 10 years. During the first Trump administration I got permission. You have to get permission all the way up to the Secretary of Treasury. And then the Secretary of Treasury said, ‘Well, I want to go down there, too.’ And then he said, ‘I want to go down there when the eclipse is coming through Kentucky, too, so I can see the eclipse and the gold at the same time,'” Paul explained.

“But they came when I wasn’t there,” Paul continued with a chuckle. “So I tried for 10 years. I set up the appointment and then because they wanted to see the eclipse, they changed the appointment. I didn’t get to go down but the secretary of Treasury and the senior senator from Kentucky did go down and attest that they believe they saw the gold down there.”

Asked by “Fox and Friends” co-host Lawrence Jones what he thinks is the problem, Paul replied: “I think some of them may not think it needs to be audited all the time, but I think the more sunlight, the better. More transparency, the better. And also it brings attention to the fact that gold still has value and implicitly — not explicitly, but implicitly — gold still gives value to the dollar. That’s why we don’t get rid of it. You know we’ve got it. The IMF has it. The World Bank has it. Most of the central banks around the world have gold. And it’s an implicit trust that the dollar still has some backing.”