President-elect Donald Trump announced Friday that his former White House adviser, Sebastian Gorka, will serve in his incoming administration.
Trump, 78, revealed in a Truth Social post that Gorka will serve as deputy assistant to the president and senior director for counterterrorism.
“Since 2015, Dr. Gorka has been a tireless advocate for the America First Agenda and the MAGA Movement,” the president-elect wrote.
“Dr. Gorka is a legal immigrant to the United States, with more than 30 years of National Security experience,” Trump added.
Gorka, 54, was born in London to Hungarian immigrant parents. He lived in Hungary from 1992 to 2008, and became a naturalized US citizen in 2012.
He served as a White House strategist during Trump’s first term, but was forced out of the White House in August of 2017, just seven months after Inauguration Day.
The conservative firebrand at the time blamed “forces” opposed to Trump’s “MAGA promise” for pushing him out.
Retired Gen. John Kelly — now a vocal critic of Trump — had recently taken over as White House chief of staff when Gorka departed.
After leaving 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., Gorka continued to back Trump on his radio show, podcast and during regular appearances on cable news programs.
In 2022, Gorka sued the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol Building after it sought to obtain his phone records.
The former White House adviser, who acknowledged watching Trump’s speech at the Ellipse on the day of the riot, slammed the committee’s subpoena as a “partisan fishing expedition.”
In his announcement, Trump noted that his relationship with Gorka started in 2015, when he served as “one of my Advisors for the GOP Primary Debates on National Security.”
“At the time, he held the Major General Matthew C. Horner Chair of Military Theory at the Marine University Foundation, and was a Guest Instructor at the JFK Special Warfare Center and School, Fort Bragg,” Trump said.
“Prior to that, he was Associate Dean for Congressional Affairs and Relations to the Special Operations Community at National Defense University, and Kokkalis Fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He is a Recipient of the DoD Joint Civilian Service Commendation awarded by USSOCOM for his work in Counterterrorism.”
In his recent social media posts, Gorka has railed against the “deep state,” accusing unelected bureaucrats of attempting to sabotage Trump’s first term and he has expressed strong reservations about Trump potentially tapping former congressman and FBI agent Mike Rogers to lead the bureau.
