Breitbart News national security editor Sebastian Gorka received an $8,000 payment from the Donald Trump campaign for “policy consulting” last year.
Gorka, who was arrested in February while trying to pass through security at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport with a handgun in his carry-on, remains active in Groundswell, a right wing lobbying effort connected to all the most successful fake political scandals of the last three years.
The Benghazi Select Committee, the IRS ‘targeting scandal,’ and the coordinated smears of Planned Parenthood in Washington, DC are all manifestations of Groundswell’s powerful connections to the handful of Tea Party extremists now holding sway over Congress.
BuzzFeed’s Rosie Gray reported on the entry found in Trump’s October, 2015 Federal Election Campaign filing which shows Gorka received the consulting fees.
Gorka is a professor at Marine Corps University and is the chairman of Threat Knowledge Group, a national security consulting group. He appears frequently as a counterterrorism expert on Fox News.
Gorka has been repeatedly identified on Breitbart as Breitbart’s national security editor, with an appearance on Monday on Breitbart’s satellite radio show being the most recent example. Gorka has also written frequently for the site, though not since December.
[…] Gorka’s wife Katharine Gorka is one of Ted Cruz’s national security advisers. She also has written in the past for Breitbart and her Twitter bio is “Council on Global Security, Breitbart News.”
Although Groundswell has been split by the Trump-Cruz debate, both candidates reportedly enjoy payola arrangements with Breitbart News, which is easily the biggest institutional player in the group.
Groundswell brought together professional cranks, conservative journalists, and grassroots Tea Party activists with Ginny Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
The group first met at the Washington, DC offices of Judicial Watch in 2013 to discuss plans for “destroying the progressive movement.”
So what sort of ‘policy consulting’ did Gorka do for Trump? Since he won’t talk to reporters, we are left to guess that Gorka shared his expertise on matters of ‘national security,’ such as it is.
- Last November, Gorka told Megyn Kelly that the United States has been “fighting jihadis since the Barbary Wars 200 years ago,” thus lending his air of authority to the error-riddled contents of a chain email
- In January, Gorka dismissed the release of four Americans held in Iran, saying that President Obama “gave away the farm for a Starbucks gift card” by using diplomacy instead of loud, angry noises
- Gorka regularly minimizes the threat of right wing domestic terrorism, which has killed more Americans since 9/11 than any other kind of terrorism, by complaining that attention to homegrown extremists is really a political attack on conservatives. One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter, etc.
- Displaying zero military acumen, Gorka dismisses the differences between Shi’a and Sunni extremists as “Coke versus Pepsi.“ Asked how he would defeat Daesh, Gorka told Fox News Business that he would send more Americans to be embedded with “the good-guy Sunnis” who “are on our side” against the Islamic State
- Gorka claims the recent nothingburger about emails Secretary of State Hillary Clinton received on her private server, which were later classified, is “the .44 magnum of smoking guns“
Notably deficient in foreign policy knowledge, Trump often substitutes demagoguery (“I’ll make Mexico build a wall”) for effective position statements. Gorka, who hails from the right wing school of made-up scandals and fraudulent “expertise,” is probably a good adviser to that sort of candidate.
Breitbart’s close relationship to both remaining contenders for the GOP nomination has led management to make questionable decisions.
After Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski grabbed Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields and left bruises on her arm, their failure to stick up for her caused a total of five resignations from the conservative news and opinion site, including longtime editor-at-large Ben Shapiro.
Gorka’s consulting gig shows that the Trump campaign had a very close working relationship to Breitbart News in the months before the incident happened.
In fact, according to the normal standards of journalism and ethics in the United States, the relationship was far too close. That’s not surprising at all: since its founding by the eponymous Andrew, Breitbart News has never once behaved like a legitimate news agency.
Donald Trump, a man who knows nothing about national security, paid $8000 for “policy consulting” from Sebastian Gorka, a man who knows even less.
I can’t imagine what could possibly go wrong.
–alopecia