Laurence Saint-Gilles’s [*] paper delves into the « Gor affair, » a political firestorm ignited by a New York Post investigation into Sergio Gor, President Trump’s powerful personnel chief. Tasked with vetting thousands of officials, Gor has suspiciously avoided submitting his own mandatory security clearance form, the SF-86. This refusal, amplified by accusations from his rival Elon Musk, has fueled speculation that Gor may be a Russian mole—a « ghost in the Trump machine. » Saint-Gilles dissects the glaring inconsistencies in Gor’s biography, from his fabricated Maltese identity and mysterious parents to his original Russian surname. The analysis scrutinizes the « agent theory » and traces Gor’s calculated political ascent through the GOP’s ultraconservative wing. Ultimately, the paper highlights the profound national security risk posed by a potentially compromised individual with access to the sensitive data of America’s top government officials.
Table of Contents
by Laurence Saint-Gilles — Paris, July 28, 2025 — [1]
The facts are reported by the very conservative New York Post, a Murdoch-owned publication highly regarded by MAGA supporters. And they are so disturbing that they seem to come straight out of a new episode of the popular series The Americans. The investigation focuses on Sergio Gor, tasked by President Trump with selecting four thousand members of the executive branch to implement his program. As Director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office, Mr. Gor must first ensure their loyalty before granting them security clearance. He carried out this task with extreme thoroughness, going so far as to check the applicants’ old tweets and political donations. But according to several administration sources, he himself has evaded this obligation: « The vetter-in-chief hasn’t submitted his own standard form (86 or SF-86), a more than 100-page questionnaire required for civil servants who need a security clearance. Among the questions that candidates must answer under penalty of criminal sanctions are their place of birth and the possible existence of ties to foreign countries. »
Filling out the form is the first necessary step for any candidate seeking security clearance, especially for people working at the White House. It marks the beginning of a process involving the FBI and the Department of Defense, the New York Post specifies. The fact that Mr. Gor has not fulfilled his obligations is a rare, if not unique, case, which immediately caused unease within the administration. Trump’s entourage tried to hush up the affair: White House legal counsel David Warrington immediately denied the facts: « Mr. Gor fully complies with all applicable ethical and legal obligations. His security clearance is active, and any insinuation that he does not have a clearance is false. » But he failed to specify that the authorization he holds is only temporary, as the final clearance can only be issued after the security investigation.
Vice President J.D. Vance, praising his « excellent work, » renewed his support, as did press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who added: « Sergio Gor is a trusted advisor to the president and he has played a vital role in helping President Trump staff the most talented administration in history. It is sad that the New York Post is engaging in baseless gossip rather than focusing on how the Trump administration is tackling the issues that impact our country and the world. »
This attack on the New York Post is quite unusual, as this pro-Trump media outlet is not in the habit of harming Donald Trump by spreading falsehoods. However, the denials of the President’s loyalists were not enough to avoid a scandal, and it is to his rival, not to say his enemy, the former head of the DOGE, that Gor owes being in the spotlight. Sergio Gor has indeed come out of the shadows on the occasion of the clash between President Trump and his former loyal supporter and head of the DOGE. The latter sees this as an opportunity to savor his revenge against Gor, whom he holds responsible for his disgrace. Politico explains that the quarrel between the two advisors had been brewing for a long time, with Musk refusing to work with Gor, who had humiliated him by joining the criticism of several Cabinet members regarding their agencies’ budget cuts. But the decision to withdraw Mr. Isaacman’s nomination to head NASA was « the last straw » for Mr. Musk, who had pushed for this nomination. « He’s a snake, » Musk reacted on his X platform. But the White House « snake » could well turn out to be a « mole, » so thick is the mystery surrounding his personality.
If Gor did indeed fill out the form as the White House claims, why does he refuse to submit it? The most plausible hypothesis is that Gor wants to hide his place of birth, according to Elon Musk, who accused him of a « serious crime. »
The Man from Malta? A Truncated Biography
Sergio Gor has always loudly proclaimed his Maltese identity: « None of his former or current collaborators have said they have ever heard him mention any other national origin. He talked about it all the time. It was as if he was Mr. Malta, » summarized one of his former colleagues. Sergio Gor did grow up in Cospicua, on the island of Malta, from the age of 3 to 12, before immigrating to the United States in 1998 or 1999. Information confirmed by the Deputy Prime Minister of Malta, who sees Gor’s rise as a source of pride for the Maltese. However, there is no record of his birth in Malta, and he has refused to reveal his birthplace to the press, while specifying that it was not Russia: a « the lady doth protest too much » situation for the New York Post.
This carefully worded statement, however, does not exclude the possibility that he was born in a former Soviet republic. Furthermore, there is something in Gor’s insistence on his island origins, « the Maltese pastries » from his « favorite bakery in Queens, » that resembles a fabricated legend to divert attention from his true origins. Because the inhabitants of Cospicua remember a « Russian guy » named Gorokhovsky, a name he later used in the United States, in high school and at the beginning of his university studies.
Besides his birth certificate, other pieces are missing to complete the puzzle of his life. We know almost nothing about his parents except that they arrived in Malta in the late 1980s, speak « an Eastern European language, » and have an Israeli passport. This last detail is of interest because many « illegals » from the Soviet period followed a similar path to that of the Gorokhovsky couple, especially during the era of Détente: immigration to the United States came at the end of a journey that often began in Israel (they could thus pass for refuseniks) and passed through Europe in order to cover their tracks and build their legend. Soviet espionage only continued and amplified at the end of the Cold War, under the era of the reformer Gorbachev. For Yuri Andropov’s successor, the KGB man, intelligence remained a priority – the USSR sought to catch up with the West technologically through espionage. However, and this is extremely troubling, shortly after their arrival in the United States in 1999, Gor’s parents seem to have left the country and mysteriously disappeared from the radar. The blogger Yuri Shvets, a former Soviet spy, suggests that Gor could be a child of illegal immigrants who entered the United States under a false identity before leaving once their mission was completed. Preparing the next generation of spies from the 1970s and 1980s by giving birth to a new generation of Russian agents, trained in major American universities to integrate them into the local political class, was indeed a concern of the Center. Thus, the anomalies and inconsistencies in Gor’s biography would find their explanation: they do not correspond to simple random errors but to a desire for concealment to obscure his true origins.
A Political Operator Motivated by the Pursuit of Proximity to Power
Sergio Gor’s professional career reveals a political operator motivated by the pursuit of proximity to power. After attending a high school in a Los Angeles suburb (where he was registered under his Russian name), Gor entered the prestigious George Washington University (Washington D.C.), which trains the cream of the crop of the political elite and senior Washington officials, an ideal place to spot future executives and political leaders. He immediately distinguished himself by his activism: in 2008, he participated in an action against Obama by dressing up as a squirrel, led the Young America’s Foundation, and organized conferences with conservative personalities. With his diploma in hand, he joined the Republican National Committee and worked alongside then-marginal and controversial GOP elected officials: Randy Forbes, a staunch supporter of the right to bear arms, Michelle Bachmann, founder of the Tea Party Caucus in Congress, and Steve King. The latter was notably accused of having made controversial remarks in defense of white supremacism, or on abortion, to which he is fiercely opposed even in cases of rape or incest. Unsurprisingly, Gor then spent some time at Fox News as an associate producer or booker. The main, if not the only, source of information for Donald Trump, this channel espouses an editorial line so close to that of the Russian media outlet Russia Today that it appears to be the launching pad for the Kremlin-friendly elites who form the hard core of the Trump II government, such as the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, or the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth.
But the key moment in Sergio Gor’s career was his appointment as deputy chief of staff to Senator Rand Paul, a pro-Russian libertarian and former Tea Party elected official. Following in the footsteps of Pat Buchanan, Rand Paul, a candidate in the 2016 GOP primaries, develops the favorite themes (the fight against immigration, economic nationalism, isolationism) of Trumpism. Through his political and personal relationships, Gor is connected to an ultra-conservative and nationalist lineage of the GOP, one that stems in particular from the networks of Eduard Lozansky and Dimitri Simes, two alleged Soviet « dissidents » who settled in the United States and infiltrated the Republican party in the 1970s to work for its rapprochement with the European and Russian far-right. It is thanks to Sergio Gor that Rand Paul, during his controversial trip to Moscow in August 2018, obtained high-level contacts. After promising to block sanctions against Russia, the Kentucky senator had come to Russia to deliver a letter from Trump to Vladimir Putin inviting him to strengthen bilateral diplomacy and to renew parliamentary and cultural contacts. Placed at the heart of the libertarian-conservative wing of the Republican Party, Gor weaves an influential network.
Entering Trump’s Orbit
After a rapid political rise in the shadow of Rand Paul, Sergio Gor moved to Florida, thus getting closer to the Trump clan. After 2016, he entered Trump’s sphere by becoming a major fundraiser for the 2020 presidential campaign. He first became close with the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr. Together, in 2021, they founded the company Winning Team Publishing, after major publishing houses refused to publish the president’s memoirs due to issues with the veracity of the facts. This initiative, which solved a thorny problem for Trump, allowed him to become indispensable to the Trump family both financially and politically. This business relationship cemented his relationship with Trump during his « post-2020 exile period, » a crucial test of loyalty in the Trumpist universe. Furthermore, the company proved to be extremely lucrative. The publication of books by Donald Trump, Marjorie…
… to navigate between the different factions of the Republican Party: he started with marginal and contested GOP figures like Bachmann or King, transitioned through the more recognized but ideologically distinct libertarian wing before pivoting to Donald Trump’s MAGA movement. This trajectory is no accident; it demonstrates an ideological flexibility and an adaptability that are the key to his success and suggest the modus operandi of an agent.
The Agent Theory
Suspicions of ties to Russia are omnipresent in the American media, and blogs and social networks are fueled by biographical gaps or anomalies. Most of the time, these are simple innuendos, such as Musk’s virulent reaction on X. But the main allegation was based on a piece of digital evidence linking Gor to a Russian national, brought forward by cybersecurity journalist Brian Krebs. In an explosive investigation, the latter revealed that one of Gor’s email accounts used a password similar to that of a Russian citizen named Sergei Anatolievich Goryachev. On June 20, Krebs finally retracted via his X and LinkedIn accounts, admitting to having made a critical error in his analysis. This retraction seems to invalidate « the agent theory » by removing its only tangible proof.
However, a body of presumptions remains that converges in favor of ties to Russia: the name, the nickname, the origins, the place of birth, the unexplained disappearance of the parents, Gor’s obstinacy in wanting to conceal this information, and finally, his contacts with high-level Russian personalities. Gor’s trip to Russia as a collaborator of Senator Rand Paul does not in itself constitute an illicit activity, but it documents his direct engagement, at a high level, with Russian political personnel.
Furthermore, Gor’s personality seems compatible with that of an agent. Gor appears as a multifaceted character: sometimes described as a loyal Trump supporter, with a keen sense of loyalty, extremely friendly and pleasant in society, sometimes compared to a « snake » because of his duplicity and his devious personality. This duality, however, does not constitute a contradiction but rather the two faces of a political operator capable of adapting his personality to the situation. These are exactly the qualities required for an intelligence professional, as Fiona Hill and Clifford G. Gaddy demonstrate in their biography of Vladimir Putin, « the man without a face, » capable of amalgamating six distinct identities.
Thus, regardless of the allegation of being a Kremlin agent, Sergio Gor does seem to represent a significant risk to the security of the United States. His willingness to hide his place of birth, his origins, and his name, combined with the mystery surrounding his parents, are highly suspicious. Now, an individual with a shady past is a classic target for foreign services. If Mr. Gor has lied about his past by falsifying official documents, this could be used as a means of pressure by a malicious government and make Mr. Gor extremely vulnerable to blackmail.
But the greatest risk is systemic. In his capacity as Director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office, he has access to the sensitive personal information of thousands of candidates for national security positions. An unvetted and compromised individual in this position can corrupt the entire recruitment process in several ways. First, by appointing compromised or unfit individuals to key positions, by blocking qualified candidates, and finally, by exfiltrating sensitive data of thousands of candidates to foreign services. In a very ambiguous way, Gor has constantly hammered during the transition period that the SF-86 form was not necessary, that the « deep state » risked corrupting the clearance process, and that Trump could simply provide everyone with an authorization via his executive authority.
The Gor affair is not a simple political intrigue; it reveals yet another dysfunction in the Trump machine, endangering national security. On July 8, 2025, The Times of Malta confirmed that Sergio Gor was born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.
Desk Russie reminds you that Laurence Saint-Gilles will present a series of five conferences: « Russo-American Relations, from the Cold War to Trump, » as part of the Université Libre Alain Besançon. Click here for more details or to register.
Laurence Saint-Gilles
[*] Laurence Saint-Gilles is an associate professor of history. She teaches the history of international relations at the Faculty of Letters of Sorbonne University. A Fulbright scholar, she dedicated her thesis and numerous articles to Franco-American diplomatic and cultural relations. She is notably the author of The United States and the New Cold War, Sorbonne University Press, 2019.
[1] See « Le Serpent » in Desk Russie — (2025-0828) —
