Sebastian Gorka, an adviser to Donald Trump who has been under pressure over his links to Hungarian far-right groups, is leaving the White House.
A senior official said Gorka, a former counterterrorism analyst for Fox News who joined the administration as an adviser, will be leaving the White House in the coming days.
The official said that Gorka had initially been hired to sit on the strategic initiatives group, an advisory panel created by Trump’s chief strategist Steve Bannon to run parallel to the national security council.
But that group fizzled out in the early months of the administration. Gorka was unable to get clearance for the national security council after he was charged last year with carrying a weapon at Ronald Reagan Washington national airport.
The Guardian reported in April that Gorka attempted to push a plan to partition Libya into three as part of an effort to be named special envoy to the country by Trump.
Despite his lack of a security clearance, Gorka has served as a prominent Trump surrogate on cable news, accusing critics of promoting “fake news” and touting that with Trump’s election, “there’s a new sheriff in town.”
In recent weeks, one White House source told the Washington Examiner that Gorka’s role had diminished to the point where he was appearing on television, “giving White House tours and peeling out in his Mustang.”
The official spoke anonymously to discuss private personnel matters. Attempts to reach Gorka by email for comment were not immediately successful.
Gorka, who is in his 40s, was born in London to Hungarian parents who had fled during the country’s 1956 failed anti-Soviet revolution. His wearing of a medal awarded to his father by the Hungarian group Vitezi Rend – or Order of Heroes – at the inaugural ball for the president raised eyebrows, as the group, which was anti-Soviet, has been linked by some to Nazi colluders.
His links to the Vitezi Rand as well as other ties to the Hungarian right had come increasingly under scrutiny in recent weeks. Prior to immigrating to the United States, Gorka had mounted an unsuccessful political career in Hungary and, in doing so, once expressed support for a far-right militia in the country.