The White House’s self-styled counterterrorism adviser and frequent media critic Sebastian Gorka said Thursday that there was no truth to a flood of recent reports that he was being forced out of his position.
But his comments left open the possibility that he could move to another role in the administration, as multiple outlets have reported.
“I will be in the White House as long as the President wants me there and if he needs me to do something somewhere else, I will do whatever he needs me to do,” Gorka told Fox News radio host Brian Kilmeade, calling reports of his departure “very fake news.”
The Daily Beast first reported last Friday that the deputy assistant to the President might be removed from his post, thanks to his inability to obtain a security clearance and media attention to his ties to a Hungarian knightly order founded by a Nazi collaborator. The Washington Examiner, New York Times and several other publications also cited anonymous administration officials who suggested Gorka may shift into a role within the Trump administration that doesn’t require access to classified information.
Gorka has dismissed such anonymously-sourced reports as “fake news,” an insult he has also lobbed at a BBC reporter asking him about falsehoods President Donald Trump repeated in a February press conference and undergraduate students questioning him about his rhetoric on Islam.
As he has in many previous interviews, Gorka told Fox News’ Kilmeade that things were different on the inside.
“Outside of Fox and some other places almost eighty, ninety percent of what you read about, what goes into the White House is absolutely bogus, it’s just made up,” he said about the rumors he would soon be leaving his role there.
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said at a press briefing this week that there were no personnel announcements to make “at this time” in response to a question on Gorka.
Jake Turx, a reporter for Orthodox Jewish publication Ami Magazine, tweeted Tuesday that Gorka told him he met with Trump and “got assurances that he’s not being asked to step down.” Turx’s tweet has since been deleted.
