Hello and welcome to Background Briefing, available 24-7 at Background Briefing.org. I'm Ian Masters, and today we'll examine a number of stories and issues in the news.

We'll begin with the latest revelations in the suspicious case of the top Trump official in charge of vetting the 4,000 who have been appointed to the executive branch in the second

Trump administration. Sergio Gore has avoided being vetted himself by refusing to fill out

the requisite forms

and has been evasive about where he was born, claiming Malta as his birthplace,

when it has now been determined he was born in the Soviet Union.

Joining us from the organization along with the Maltese newspaper,

which uncovered Sergio

Girokowski's background and his possible ties to Russian intelligence, is Kevin Hall, the Washington,

D.C.-based North American editor at the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project,

overseeing investigations in the U.S., Mexico and Canada.

Previously, he spent nearly 22 years at McClatchie and the Miami Herald as the Brazil-based

South American Bureau Chief, a chief economic correspondent and a senior investigative reporter.

He was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2010 for his reporting on the origins of the U.S. financial

crisis and shared the 2017 Pulitzer Prize as a lead U.S. partner in the Panama Papers.

He has a new report.

At the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, we will discuss exclusive.

Top Trump advisor, Sergio Gore, was born in the Soviet Union.

Then following Friday's purge of the State Department with mass firings of up to 3,400 personnel,

we will speak with Ambassador Cynthia Snyder, a professor of diplomacy at Georgetown University,

co-director of the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics in Georgetown, and the Timbuck

Two Renaissance, a Mali-based platform for countering extremism and promoting peace and development

...