Top Trump personnel chief’s secret origins traced to Soviet-era Tashkent
Gor’s public profile has increased more recently, as he continued his work overseeing appointments of thousands of officials for the Trump administration. Media coverage has since filled in much of his biography with one glaring exception — his birthplace.
Now, the Times of Malta and OCCRP have obtained a notarized Maltese property record that shows Gor’s origins. He was born Sergio Gorokhovsky on November 30, 1986, in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, which was part of the Soviet Union at the time.
Gor’s lawyer, Robert Garson, confirmed by email that his client was born in Tashkent.
Gor had previously declined to say where he was born. The December 2024 profile of Gor by the Washington Post — which noted his low public profile, despite becoming a “powerful man” in the Trump administration — skirted the question of his birthplace entirely. It called him an immigrant from the Mediterranean island nation of Malta.
Gor’s Maltese background has since been cited in other media, including a New York Post story in June that garnered widespread attention. Gor declined to reveal his country of birth to the newspaper, saying only that it was not in Russia.
Records indicate that Gor spent at least five years of his childhood in Malta. His mother created a Maltese company in 1994, listing her nationality as Israeli. Through the firm, she owned a house in Cospicua, an ancient coastal city featuring a fortified harbor.
In 2021, Gor purchased that house from his mother’s company for 255,000 euros ($268,000), according to the notarized property record that includes his birthplace in Uzbekistan’s capital.
Garson said this was Gor’s family home that was owned by his mother, who has since passed away.
“Due to his affection for the island and his happy childhood recollections, Mr. Gor decided to keep (it) in the family,” Garson added.
De La Salle College, a Catholic school for boys in Vittoriosa, a town near Cospicua, confirmed that Sergio Gorokhovsky was a student there between 1996 and 1999. In an email, the school included Gor’s date of birth, which matched the birthday listed in the property record.
When he was a boy, Gor’s family emigrated to the U.S., where he became a citizen. His path to politics led him eventually to a job with Republican Senator Rand Paul, and then into Trump’s orbit.
One of his activities with Paul was a trip to Moscow in 2018 funded by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in D.C. The visit was characterized as a “fact-finding trip to research, discuss and explore issues related to Russia and the U.S.”
Gor had also traveled to Moscow the year before, according to leaked Russian border records. He flew from Washington D.C. to Moscow with the Russian state carrier Aeroflot, and left the next day for Rome.
Garson explained that Gor is “an avid traveler.”
“This was a connection flight and apropos of nothing,” he said. “Mr. Gor had no meetings, and any implications otherwise would be malicious and defamatory.”
Gor left Paul’s office in 2020 to work as chief of staff on the Trump Victory Finance Committee for the failed re-election campaign. He also co-founded a conservative publishing company with Donald Trump Jr. called Winning Team Publishing.
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