Previously, Gorka was a counterterrorism analyst for Fox News and an editor at Breitbart News Network, where he met now Trump administration Chief Strategist, Steve Bannon.
@SebGorka @FreeBeacon The irony in your statement….
— Carrie Rayfield (@cosmocarrie75) May 1, 2017
Gorka was hired as a member of the Strategic Initiatives Group, which was an advisory panel created by Bannon to sit alongside the National Security Council. Reportedly, Gorka was to be hired for National Security Council, but was unable to get clearance due to being charged in 2016 with concealing a weapon at an airport in Washington.
Gorka's short-lived career has however been harassed by allegations of ties to a Nazi-linked Hungarian group, called the Hungarian Guard. Critics have also lambasted his approach to terrorism, which he argues is rooted in Islamic theology, and has nothing to do with geopolitics.
He reportedly left a European diplomat nonplussed by suggesting that the best solution to solving the political deadlock in Libya is by partitioning the country into three parts.
Gorka has also been decried as a conspiracy theorist. His detractors justify this by pointing to an article he wrote in Breitbart, in which he argued that an interfaith Muslim and Christian event was planned by Muslim groups to coincide with the declaration of Islamic "holy war" by the Ottoman sultan in the First World War.
Muslim Brotherhood Overruns National Cathedral in DC — Breitbart http://t.co/bJyiRJJCI1 via @BreitbartNews
— Janie Johnson (@jjauthor) January 30, 2015
Back in March, a coalition made up of the Arab American Institute, Bend the Arc Jewish Action and Muslim activists issued a joint declaration that Gorka's "presence in the administration is shameful, but not surprising." They added that:
"Gorka should never have been hired and has no place in any administration."
While the White House is yet to confirm the exact reason for Gorka's departure, it appears that pressure from Democrats over his participation in the administration has played a significant role.
President Trump is also reported to be moving away from the orbit of his Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, and more towards the persuasion of his daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband Jarod Kushner, who are said to be critical of the positions taken by Gorka and Bannon.
