Attacks on Top Trump Adviser Gorka a Product of Obama Admin Holdovers, Targeted Leakshttp://freebeacon.com/national-security/attacks-top-trump-adviser-gorka-product-obama-admin-holdovers-targeted-leaks/Obama administration holdovers and loyalists are waging a leak-driven media campaign against a senior counter-terrorism adviser hand-picked by President Donald Trump, with the aim of undermining the Trump administration's national security apparatus, according to multiple senior White House officials and sources close to the administration.
Sebastian Gorka, a longtime national security expert profiled by senior editor Bill Gertz in today's Free Beacon, has been the subject of multiple leaks and negative stories portraying him as a bigot as part of a campaign similar to the one that brought down former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
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The media's focus on Gorka comes on the heels of a similar situation in which Obama administration holdovers and loyalists targeted Flynn by planting selective leaks of classified information in newspapers across the country. The Free Beacon first disclosed this effort a day after Flynn was forced to resign.
The most recent campaign against Gorka is being fueled by career staffers and anti-Trump insiders who fear being exiled by the current administration, according to senior White House officials familiar with the situation.
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Rep. Mike Gallagher (R., Wis.), a member of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees, described Gorka as "very insightful and highly professional."
"You may disagree with some of his arguments, but his patriotism is beyond question," Gallagher told the Free Beacon. "And the fact that some of the architects of our failed foreign policy of the last eight years—which has allowed a terrorist state to emerge in the heart of the Middle East and triggered a rise in global salafi jihadism—are now trying to smear and discredit Seb is ironic and irresponsible. The counterterrorism field is highly politicized, and I fear the personal attacks on him are politically motivated."
As part of the effort to undermine Gorka, multiple publications, including those in the Jewish world, have sought to tie him to anti-Semitic movements and leaders. While multiple insiders dismissed the claims as nonsense, they admitted that the headlines have had an impact.
