President’s aide faces storm over medal from group with Nazi link
A BRITISH aide to Donald Trump has denied accusations that his ties to a Hungarian group linked to the Nazis are evidence of anti-Semitic views, as calls mount for his resignation.
Sebastian Gorka, who serves as deputy assistant to the president, is under increasing pressure after he was pictured wearing a medal presented by the Vitézi Rend (Order of Vitéz).
The US government designated the order as an organisation “under Nazi control” during the Second World War, when Hungary’s nationalist leader Miklos Horthy allied with Adolf Hitler and collaborated in the murder of hundreds of thousands of Jews.
Mr Gorka said he wore the medal in memory of his father, who was honoured for his fight against the Communist regime in Hungary.
“My father was nine years old when the Second World War started,” he told The Daily Telegraph. “I was born in 1970. Neither of us could be guilty of what they’re stating.”
Mr Gorka, an adviser to Mr Trump on terrorism, is battling negative headlines ahead of a major summit this week when the 68 countries of the global coalition fighting Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) convene in Washington. The Anne Frank Centre is calling for Mr Gorka’s resignation, while Democratic senators have demanded to know if Mr Gorka misled immigration officials over membership of the order when he became an American citizen in 2012.
The issue first surfaced when he was seen at an inaugural ball wearing the medal in January.
Mr Gorka said he was the victim of a politically motivated campaign that attacked his dead Hungarian parents.
He denied any anti-Semitism in his family. He said his father had protected Jewish boys wearing yellow stars on the way to school as a child. When Communists took power, he supplied information to MI6 before being arrested, tortured and imprisoned.
He arrived in the UK after escaping during the 1956 uprising.
“I am proud of what my father did,” said Mr Gorka. He insisted that he was not a full member of the Order of Vitez.
“By the bye laws I inherited the title of Vitez through the merits of my father, but I never swore allegiance formally.”