Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump’s campaign paid $8,000 to an editor for the conservative news website Breitbart for “policy consulting,” BuzzFeed News reported on Tuesday.
Federal Election Commission filings show that the Trump campaign paid the sum to Breitbart’s national security editor, Sebastian Gorka, in October. Neither Gorka nor spokespersons for the Trump campaign returned BuzzFeed’s requests for comment.
Gorka last wrote for the website in December, but was identified as the site’s national security editor as recently as Monday, BuzzFeed noted. Hadas Gold, a media reporter at Politico, tweeted that an unnamed source told her Gorka hadn’t been a full time editor for the site since 2014 and it was more of an “honorary title.”
Buzzfeed reported back in August, citing anonymous sources, that some Breitbart staffers believed Trump was paying the news site for favorable coverage. The website’s executive chairman, Steve Bannon, vehemently denied that charge and called it a “lie.”
Breitbart’s relationship with the Trump campaign also was called into question after Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, grabbed reporter Michelle Fields’ arm at a March campaign event.
Breitbart published a report after the incident suggesting that Lewandowski actually wasn’t the person who grabbed Fields’ arm. Shortly afterward, Fields, along with two editors and another reporter, resigned, arguing that the news site didn’t stand up for her in the wake of the altercation.
