Trump nominates member of Nazi-linked group to senior-level national security post

22 November 2024

A former aide to President-elect Donald Trump in his first administration has just received a high-profile appointment to the White House National Security Council (NSC) — despite being a member of a far-right group with ties to Nazi Germany.

Politico reported Friday that Sebastian Gorka has been hired as deputy assistant to the president and the NSC's senior director of counterterrorism. Gorka had been angling to be deputy national security advisor, though Trump ended up appointing Alex Wong, who was a State Department official in the first Trump administration.

In 2017, NBC News reported that Gorka was photographed wearing a medal associated with the Hungarian organization Vitezi Rend (which translates to "valiant order"), and that he occasionally signs his name with a lowercase "v" which order members use as an identifier. NBC also cited Jewish newspaper the Forward's report that three Vitezi Rend leaders confirmed that Gorka was a lifelong member.

The Forward reported in early 2017 that the State Department described Vitezi Rend as having been "under the direction of the Nazi Government of Germany." During World War II, members of the group helped deliver hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews into the hands of the Hitler regime, which massacred nearly all of them. The group's founder, Admiral Miklos Horthy, was a "self-confessed anti-Semite" who ruled Hungary for 24 years.

According to the Forward, Gorka did not disclose his membership in the group when he emigrated to the U.S. in 2012, as the State Department says Vitezi Rend member "are presumed to be inadmissible" under the Immigration and Nationality Act. Leaders of Vitezi Rend say members take a lifelong oath of loyalty to the group.

Gorka argued at the time that he wore the Vitezi Rend medal to honor his father, who won it in his opposition of Hungary's communist government that ruled between 1949 and 1989. But the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect doubted that explanation and called for a formal investigation into Gorka.

"How many ducks in the Trump White House must walk, talk and quack Anti-Semitically before our country wakes up and sees the greater problem?" the organization told NBC News. "Who among us wears a medal of a Nazi-sympathetic organization to remember loved ones?"

Like other Trump Cabinet appointees, Gorka is a Fox News personality, and joined the network after leaving the Trump White House in 2017. However, he left Fox just two years later to host his own show on the conservative Salem Radio Network. Gorka — a friend of Fox primetime host Sean Hannity — told the Hollywood Reporter he would still be an occasional guest on Hannity if called upon.

"I’m still supporting Sean Hannity and other Fox shows as a free agent as my new schedule permits,” Gorka said.

Even though he was quoted on Fox shows as an "expert" in national security and terrorism matters, Stephen Sloan, a professor who advised Gorka on his Ph.D. dissertation still held off from using the word "expert" to describe Gorka's level of knowledge.

"I would not call him an expert on terrorism," Sloan told CNN in 2017. "[Gorka] does a very good job being the bulldog, if you will, for the administration … but as an adviser, I have some discomfort."

Click here to read Politico's report in full.

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