Sebastian Gorka, a controversial national security aide in the White House, is expected to leave his job, several administration officials confirm to CNN.
One senior administration official said Gorka is expected to find an opportunity outside the White House soon. Another said it’s possible he would take another job in the administration, but added it’s more likely he will leave altogether. That official said Gorka was simply generating too much controversy for the White House.
Gorka is a deputy assistant to President Donald Trump and has been working on the National Security Council and on the Strategic Initiatives Group, which Gorka has described as a focal point for task forces collaborating with people outside government.
Gorka is a former Breitbart national security editor who has been outspoken on the need to confront Islamic terrorism. In his role in the White House, he has become one of Trump’s most prominent public cheerleaders, frequently hitting the radio airwaves to defend the President’s counterterrorism policies and public statements.
Gorka has previously vigorously defended the administration’s travel ban and the President’s continued use of the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism.”
Gorka is the latest shake-up for the Trump White House’s National Security Council following the firing of the first national security adviser Michael Flynn, the removal of Steve Bannon from the NSC’s Principals Committee and the expected departure of deputy national security adviser K.T. McFarland.
Gorka’s work for Trump goes back as far as 2015, as Federal Election Commission filings showed Gorka was paid $8,000 that October to be a policy consultant for the Trump campaign.
But a CNN KFile review of Gorka’s public comments throughout the presidential campaign shows that even after his work for Trump, the former Breitbart editor offered stinging critiques of his future boss’s rhetoric on key foreign policy issues from terrorism to Russia and China.
Gorka, a US citizen who was born in Britain and has Hungarian parents, was known for his dire warnings about Islamic terrorism while at Breitbart.
Though his role at the White House was always nebulous, he emerged as a top spokesman for the Trump administration, frequently appearing on CNN and other networks.
The Washington Examiner first reported Gorka’s expected departure.
Gorka could not be reached for comment. But Trent Franks, a Republican congressman from Arizona, said Monday evening that he spoke with Gorka earlier in the day and said there was “no substantiation” to him leaving.
“Their real target isn’t Sebastian Gorka. It’s the president,” Franks said of Gorka’s critics on CNN’s “Erin Burnett OutFront.” “I know this man’s heart and it’s a disgrace — and the left is going to have a lot of egg on its face.”
