What is Sergio Gor hiding?
It’s a fair question to ask and keep asking after the New York Post reported last week that Gor, the 38-year-old head of the White House Presidential Personnel Office, was six months into his job and had still not submitted the first official paperwork required to receive a permanent security clearance. The White House now says Gor is “fully compliant with all applicable ethical and legal obligations” and that he maintains his temporary security clearance.
But since Gor’s job is to vet the roughly 4,000 political appointments in the federal government, it’s curious he himself has not been fully vetted. And, as the Post noted, there are still some outstanding puzzles about some basic personal details, including his birth country and why he shortened his surname from Gorokhovsky. (As I reported late last year, people who knew him say Gor was born in the Soviet Union before immigrating to Malta and, eventually, to the United States.)
Those missing details are part of a larger, incomplete story about how Gor has gone from an obscure Republican Capitol Hill staffer to a powerful—and well-compensated—member of Donald Trump’s inner ring of power, an aide who tussled with the world’s richest man and won, and the man with the power to make or break the careers of those who seek to serve in the president’s administration.
Before he joined the White House, Gor’s perch in Trumpworld, from his boutique publishing house that sells expensive Trump-penned coffee table books to his tenure running a pro-Trump super PAC last year, brought him plenty of financial benefits. That allowed this one-time staffer for backbench Republican members of Congress to become the owner of two properties in South Florida and mingle with the super-rich at Mar-a-Lago (where he is a member).
But, as with his personal background, what can be pieced together from publicly available information—Gor’s White House financial disclosure form, filings with the Federal Election Commission, and public property records—prompts more curiosity about what else Gor may be glossing over.
Take, for instance, Gor’s time as the head of Right for America, a super PAC launched in 2024 and blessed by the then-former president. Right for America wasn’t the only or most important outside vehicle boosting the Republican nominee, but thanks to financial backing provided primarily by former Marvel Entertainment CEO Ike Perlmutter, Gor’s group spent tens of millions of dollars in the final weeks of the campaign on TV ads in key swing states.
But farther down on the super PAC’s ledger was a transaction that ended up helping boost two of Gor’s own companies. In its most recent FEC filing, Right for America disclosed a $500,000 transfer to a different group, Turning Point PAC, which is affiliated with the Trump-aligned conservative youth organization Turning Point USA. This donation of half a million dollars to Turning Point PAC occurred on July 9, 2024. One day earlier, on July 8, Turning Point PAC made a fairly large purchase of $68,000 for “hats” from one of Gor’s companies, Gold Standard Publishing. And on July 11, Turning Point PAC made a second, larger purchase of hats for $132,000—this time from Winning Team Publishing, another company controlled by Gor.
About two months later, Turning Point PAC purchased more hats from both of Gor’s companies, bringing the total amount this group paid to both Gold Standard and Winning Team to just under $250,000. In the 2024 cycle, the two companies did business with other campaigns and committees, including the Republican National Committee, Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake (whose book Winning Team has also published), and the joint fundraising committee for Sen. Rand Paul. But combined, Gor’s companies’ biggest customer among political committees last cycle was Turning Point PAC.
Turning Point PAC has been working with Gor’s companies for years, spokesman Andrew Kolvet told The Dispatch. Kolvet noted that the group uses the hats at its big political rallies and for fundraising giveaways.
That’s not the only financial connection between Gor and the Turning Point universe. Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk has had two books published by Winning Team. And on Gor’s White House financial disclosure form, where he describes himself as the CEO of Gold Standard and the president of Winning Team, he lists among the sources of his compensation for 2024 Turning Point USA, for which Gor says he provided consulting services.
Gor did not respond to questions from The Dispatch, but the White House provided several quotations in support of Gor from various officials.
“Sergio has led the effort to ensure committed, principled America First advocates staff the President’s government. He’s done a great job, and will continue to do so,” said Vice President J.D. Vance.
And this, from White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt: “Sergio Gor is a trusted adviser to President Trump and he has played a critical role in helping President Trump staff the most talented administration in history.”
The business of politics is a small world, and it’s hardly the first time a political consultant has made money for his side business while working on a campaign or committee. But Trump has at times demonstrated frustration at those in his orbit who appear to be getting rich at his expense. Most famously, as the journalist Michael Bender reported, Trump was furious at news reports that his 2020 campaign manager, Brad Parscale, had “gotten rich” off Trump’s reelection effort.
The truth is that business has boomed for Gor since 2021, when he first bought a two-bedroom condo for $360,000 in Riviera Beach, about a 30-minute drive from Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach. Soon after moving to Florida, he launched Winning Team Publishing, a partnership with Donald Trump Jr. The company has sold a number of books, from large pictorials like Our Journey Together, which documents Trump’s first White House term, to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s memoir. Winning Team also sells signed editions of its books for a premium and, yes, “Make America Great Again” hats.
The next year, Gor sold his home in Arlington, Virginia, for $860,000, and purchased a second home in South Florida—this time, a $3.2 million house near his condo. According to Palm Beach County property records, there is no mortgage on file for either of those properties. And things kept getting better financially for Gor—last year, he put in a pool.
If Trump is aware or has a problem with Gor’s sudden prosperity since joining up with Team Trump, there’s no evidence of that. And after all, Gor has demonstrated plenty of loyalty to the MAGA cause. He was a regular presence at the White House during Trump’s first term, when he was still working as a communications aide for Sen. Paul, and by 2020, he had been hired to work on the finance committee for the president’s reelection campaign. The job reunited him with Kimberly Guilfoyle, then the girlfriend of Donald Trump Jr., whom Gor had first encountered when he was a producer at Fox News. Throughout the 2020 cycle, Gor joined the MAGA power couple as they zipped around the country to raise money for the president’s reelection campaign.
Everything that has come since—the publishing companies, the super PAC, and now the plum White House job—is further demonstration of how much the president trusts Gor. So, with his temporary security clearance still active, perhaps a thorough vetting just hasn’t been necessary for Gor to remain in Trump’s good graces. The end result of his high-profile clashes with Elon Musk, including Gor’s successful effort to tank the Musk-backed nominee to head NASA, indicates just where the power lies: a diminished Musk is out of government and calling Gor a “snake” from the sidelines.
Gor, meanwhile, remains as secure as ever.
“Sergio, thank you for the great job that you did,” Trump said at a White House event earlier this month celebrating the administration’s new hires. “I appreciate it, Sergio.”
