A former FBI analyst who spent two years advising then-Rep. Adam Schiff while Schiff pushed the Trump-Russia narrative and led the first Trump impeachment subsequently “burrowed in” to the federal bureaucracy.
While presidents appoint more than 3,000 people for political positions, the federal government directly employs roughly 2.3 million people, most of whom serve in ostensibly nonpolitical, career positions. The Office of Personnel Management tracks when political appointees transition to career positions—a process often referred to as “burrowing in” to the bureaucracy—and Lucian Sikorskyj did so last September.
Sikorskyj moved from principal deputy assistant secretary for counterterrorism at the Department of Homeland Security to associate administrator for materials and safety at the Federal Aviation Administration on Sept. 8, 2024, according to OPM records. He received a pay bump from $180,000 to $214,500.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Sikorskyj remains at the FAA. (He has verified his LinkedIn profile by proving his identity via government identification.) The FAA has not responded to The Daily Signal’s requests for comment to confirm whether he remains at the agency.
After 9 years at the FBI, Sikorskyj joined the National Security Council in June 2016 under President Barack Obama, where he stayed until October 2017. After working at NATO in Brussels, Belgium, and serving eight months in the office of the director of national intelligence, he joined the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in February 2019. The FBI and the ODNI declined to comment on Sikorskyj’s work history.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Sikorskyj served as subcommittee staff director at the committee, working as “a senior advisor to the chair of the committee and nearly 15 members of U.S. Congress.” The profile also states that he “supported the speaker of the House of Representatives and their national security advisor.”
He also “led, co-led, or played a key role in major and complex congressional investigations, hearings, reports, and congressional delegations at home and abroad.”
In July 2021, he joined the Department of Homeland Security, where he stayed until May 2023, when he joined the White House National Security Council, according to LinkedIn.
Sikorskyj’s profile states that he “serves as a senior leader of the FAA and its chief intelligence and security officer,” directly reporting to the head of the FAA. He “leads 800+ person staff, including 7 executives, with 7 offices, 25+ teams, and a 125+ million-dollar budget with contracts and grants.”
While Sikorskyj’s LinkedIn profile demonstrates a long career in counterterrorism, his stint serving on the House Intelligence Committee under Schiff may raise bias concerns, especially as Sikorskyj appears to still work in the second Trump administration.
In February 2019, as Sikorskyj was joining Schiff’s committee, Schiff told CNN, “You can see evidence in plain sight on the issue of collusion” between Trump and Russia.
The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board cited congressional testimony revealing that “Adam Schiff spread falsehoods shamelessly about Russia and Donald Trump for three years even as his own committee gathered contrary evidence.” The board cited former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who told Schiff and his colleagues, “I never saw any direct empirical evidence that the Trump campaign or someone in it was plotting/conspiring with the Russians to meddle with the election.”
The House of Representatives censured Schiff on June 21, 2023, by a vote of 213 to 209. The censure resolution noted that Schiff, as head of the Intelligence Committee, held “positions of extreme trust, affording him access to sensitive intelligence unavailable to most Members of Congress.” The resolution faulted him for having “abused this trust by alleging he had evidence of collusion that, as is clear from reports by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz, and Special Counsel John Durham, never existed.”
At the time, Schiff said he would bear the censure as a “badge of honor,” accusing the Republicans of doing then-former President Trump’s bidding and stating that he “will not yield.”
In addition to the Trump-Russia saga, Schiff’s Intelligence Committee led the first impeachment of then-President Donald Trump over a July 2019 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Schiff, now a U.S. senator from California, did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment.
A recent poll found that a whopping 75% of Washington, D.C.-based federal employees making $75,000 or more per year who voted for Democrat presidential nominee Kamala Harris in November said they would not follow a lawful Trump order if they considered it bad policy.
While some political appointees who took “career” positions may faithfully work for the U.S. government under any president, this poll suggests that some staff inside the federal government may work against the goals of the current president, in this case Donald Trump.
Furthermore, a recent Foundation for Government Accountability study found that Democrat employees outnumber Republican employees by a 2-to-1 margin across federal agencies. In the 2024 presidential election, 84% of the money that federal employees gave in political contributions went to Harris.
While the office of the director of national intelligence declined to comment on Sikorskyj’s history, the office did highlight recent remarks from Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.
“We have a long history, unfortunately, of politicization of the Intelligence Community and manipulation of the intelligence to meet some kind of political objective, to undermine the president that has been elected by the American people by those who simply disagree with his views,” she said.
An aide for the House Intelligence Committee, now chaired by Rep. Rick Crawford, R-Ark., expressed concerns about former Intelligence Community staff acting as deep state operatives under the Trump administration.
“The committee does share the concerns about federal employees, particularly ones in the Intelligence Community, who cannot separate their politics from their jobs,” the aide told The Daily Signal.
A spokesperson for the committee’s Democrat minority also addressed the issue.
“Lucian Sikorskyj’s work on the Intelligence Committee focused on the bipartisan oversight of the Intelligence Community, particularly counterterrorism,” the Democrat spokesperson told The Daily Signal. “He has more than 20 years of experience as a civil servant under both Democratic and Republican administrations, and his expertise as a member of the committee staff was valued by all members.”