Senators Question Whether Trump Adviser Gorka Has Ties to Nazi-Linked Group

Source: Newsweek | March 18, 2017 | Jeff Stein

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Now three U.S. senators are asking the departments of Justice and Homeland Security to investigate whether Gorka covered up his membership in a Nazi-linked Hungarian organization on his 2012 application for American citizenship.

“We are deeply concerned by reports that Dr. Gorka concealed the material fact of his membership in the Vitézi Rend, a far-right anti-Semitic Hungarian organization, when he applied for U.S. citizenship,” wrote the three senators, Richard Durbin of Illinois, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Ben Cardin of Maryland. A day earlier, Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, also a Democrat, had asked President Trump to send Gorka’s immigration papers to the House Judiciary Committee.

All said they were troubled by the findings of an extensive investigation into Gorka’s Hungarian past by the Forward, a 120-year-old New York Jewish newspaper based in New York, which reported on March 16 that the White House adviser was a “sworn member” of the Historical Vitézi Rend, “a virulently anti-Semitic organization that operated under the direction of the Nazis during World War II.” The paper said Gorka had taken a “lifelong oath of loyalty” to the organization, according to its leaders.

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“Dr. Gorka was photographed wearing a Vitézi Rend medal on several occasions, including at a Presidential inaugural ball earlier this year,” the senators complained in their March 17 letter to Acting Deputy Attorney General Dana Boente and Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly. “He has also identified himself as ‘Dr. Sebastian L. v. Gorka’ in written testimony before Congress. Experts note that the initial “v.” is used by sworn members of the Vitézi Rend.”

The senators said they were additionally concerned “because of the White House’s own checkered record on religious discrimination,” citing the administration’s failure to mention Jewish victims on Holocaust Remembrance Day—“an omission which Dr. Gorka publicly defended”—and the president’s “slow” condemnation of  “the wave of attacks on Jewish community centers.”

But another Jewish publication, the Tablet, came to Gorka’s defense, saying he wore the medal only in honor of his father, who was decorated by the Vitézi Rend for being “a dedicated member of the anti-Communist underground.”

Gorka also told the Tablet he had “never been a member of the Vitézi Rend” or “taken an oath of loyalty to the Vitéz Rend.” He did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Newsweek after the letter from the senators was published on Friday.

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