The official White House Nazi is safe

When the White House backed off its efforts to dump Sebastian Gorka on another federal agency, the controversial counterterrorism advisor had the president himself to thank, The Daily Beast has learned.

After news emerged last week that the Trump administration was setting the stage to move the British-born national security aide out of the White House, President Donald Trump and his chief strategist Stephen Bannon “personally intervened” to put a halt to Gorka’s White House eviction, two senior administration sources said.

Last Friday, The Daily Beast broke the news that the Trump administration had been actively exploring options to remove Gorka from the West Wing, where he serves as “deputy assistant” to the president, and place him at another federal agency. News of Gorka’s looming departure from the White House came amid security clearance issues and a mounting controversy over his involvement with a far-right Hungarian group notorious for its collaboration with the Nazi regime during the World War II. Gorka also holds fringe, clash-of-civilization views that many have criticized as anti-Muslim and extreme.

Senior administration sources described the situation to The Daily Beast last week as “a pain in the ass,” and said that Gorka—“biding his time” on the federal payroll—had virtually zero substantive duties at the White House or role in its decision-making or national-security policy decisions.

However, Gorka owes his continued presence in the White House to President Trump himself, who views him as a robust communicator of the administration’s anti-terrorism, anti-ISIS policies, particularly on conservative radio and TV interviews.

Gorka and Bannon are close. They worked together at Breitbart News—the far-right Trump-boosting outlet that Bannon once ran as a “dictator,” according to former employees—where Gorka served as national security editor even as he was also a paid consultant for the Trump campaign.