A new investigation has everyone talking
So if you’re following the Russian spy / handler story – this is what I could find out.
Sergio Gor runs Trump’s Presidential Personnel Office – basically the guy who decides who gets hired for the roughly 4,000 political appointments across the executive branch. That puts him in charge of vetting thousands of White House staffers, yet he himself hasn’t been fully vetted for a security clearance five months into the second Trump administration. The irony is hard to miss.
Gor claims he was born in Cospicua, Malta on November 30, 1986, though the Maltese government could not confirm his birthplace. Members of the Cospicua community recalled a young foreign couple of Eastern European descent who settled in the city with their three-year-old son in the late 1980s, referring to Sergio as the “Russian boy” in their neighborhood. He supposedly emigrated to the US at age 12 in 1999, went to high school in Los Angeles, and later studied at George Washington University.
Here’s where it gets interesting. Investigative cybercrime reporter Brian Krebs discovered that Gor once used the unique password “961649507273” for his email address sergio.gor@gmail.com. That same password was used with multiple Russian email addresses, including sgoryachev999@rambler.ru, goryachev-sergey@yandex.ru, and several others with “.ru” domains. The odds of someone with a similar name using that exact password are basically zero.
The email goryachev-sergey@yandex.ru has multiple entries in Russian government databases for a Sergey Anatolyevich Goryachev, DOB November 20, 1980, who appears to have lived in Saratov, Russia and has a Russian tax ID number. So either Gor is living under a false identity, or there’s one hell of a coincidence happening here.
The Malta connection adds another layer of intrigue. Malta’s “golden visa” program has been a known route for Russian money laundering and EU residency, with Russians acquiring nearly half of the golden passports issued to date. The EU Court of Justice ruled Malta’s golden passport program illegal in 2025, noting that EU law requires citizenship applications to be based on “a genuine link to the country”. The program required applicants to make a minimum investment of €600,000, purchase or rent real estate, donate €10,000 to charity, and maintain residence in Malta for three years.
The story exploded into public view thanks to a perfect storm of petty White House drama. Elon Musk publicly called Gor “a snake” after Gor convinced Trump to rescind Jared Isaacman’s nomination to lead NASA – Isaacman being Musk’s personal friend. This feud apparently motivated journalists and online sleuths to dig deeper into Gor’s background.
Gor has yet to submit Standard Form 86, the 100-page background investigation form required for a security clearance, according to multiple sources. The form covers citizenship, employment history, relatives, foreign contacts and travel, financial activities, drug use and more. How someone gets an interim security clearance without filing this paperwork is its own mystery – one source told the Post that Gor received his interim clearance via “a handshake and a wink”.
Gor has worked with major Republican figures including Rubio, Vance, Matt Gaetz, and Rand Paul. He also officiated Matt Gaetz’s wedding in 2021 and served as both officiant and DJ. He led fundraising for the “Right for America” SuperPAC, which spent nearly $72 million during Trump’s 2024 campaign. He co-founded Winning Team Publishing with Donald Trump Jr., publishing books like “Our Journey Together” and “Letters to Trump”.
The White House has been doing damage control. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt accused the Post of “engaging in baseless gossip,” while White House counsel David Warrington said Gor is “fully compliant with all applicable ethical and legal obligations”. But when your guy in charge of vetting everyone else refuses to get vetted himself, that’s not exactly reassuring.
Whether this is a case of genuine espionage or just really sloppy hiring practices remains to be seen. The circumstantial evidence – the shared passwords, the Russian email addresses, the Malta connection, the refusal to submit background paperwork – certainly raises questions. But circumstantial evidence isn’t proof, and the allegations could be politically motivated given the Musk-Gor feud.
What’s undeniable is that someone with this many red flags shouldn’t be in charge of hiring decisions for the entire federal government. At minimum, it shows a level of carelessness about security that would be laughable if it weren’t so dangerous.