Sebastian Gorka
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Sebastian Gorka is a former Trump administration deputy assistant and a high-volume pro-Trump social media personality. He is identified by John Kiriakou as having solicited $5,000 from him in 2018 in exchange for tweeting at President Donald Trump on his behalf, Kiriakou's second attempted pardon transaction of that year, following the Rudy Giuliani extortion attempt.

The 2018 solicitation

After the Giuliani meeting collapsed, Kiriakou's Republican lobbyist routed him instead to Gorka, whose value proposition was that he was followed on Twitter by the president. Kiriakou's reaction to the introduction: "I don't like that dude at all. I don't like him at all. He wears his father's Nazi party lapel pin, like, he's not a Neo-Nazi, he's an actual ..."

The meeting was arranged at the launch party for a Gorka book at the Trump International Hotel. Per the lobbyist's pre-brief, the ask would be $1,500 and Kiriakou was instructed to bring his checkbook. At the event the lobbyist walked Kiriakou up to Gorka. Gorka: "Sir, you're the man who wants me to tweet at the president." Kiriakou: "If you're so inclined." Gorka: "Give me $5,000." Kiriakou: "Seriously?" Gorka: "Give me $5,000."

Kiriakou's response: "I've been around for a long time and I understand the nature of Washington, but I'm not going to let you shake me down like I'm some two-bit guy off the street." He refused and left.

In a second telling Kiriakou adds detail and differs on one figure. The lobbyist's pre-brief there sets the expected ask at $2,000 rather than $1,500, "he's going to ask you for $2,000," to which Kiriakou's reaction was "oh, it's going to be one of those nights" and "I know how the game is played, I'll give him $2,000 to tweet." The discrepancy between the two figures is unresolved in his own accounts. The evening's programme included dinner at Gorka's house after the hotel party, and the room held, by his description, nearly every elected Republican in Washington. He renders Gorka's delivery as "so you're the chap who wants me to tweet" in "that British accent I want to smack right out of his face," with the $5,000 demand made aside, out of the lobbyist's hearing. His refusal in this version runs: "I've been in Washington for 40 years and I'm not a babe in the woods. I know how it's played, but I'm not going to be shaken down by you or by anybody else", and he walked out.

The lapel pin, the middle initial, and the clearance

Kiriakou separates his objection to Gorka into a personal one and a professional one. The professional objection is the pin: "he wears his father's Nazi party lapel pin, he's not a Neo-Nazi, he's an actual Nazi from Nazi Hungary." He adds a second marker, that the children of Hungarian Nazis take the letter L as a second middle initial, and that Gorka appends it when signing documents. "So are you a Nazi or are you an American?"

By Kiriakou's account this had a concrete consequence in Trump's first term: Gorka lasted only thirty days on the National Security Council because the FBI would not grant him a security clearance, and the senior counterterrorism directorship he held could not be performed without one. On his return in the second term, Kiriakou says, Trump ordered the FBI to issue the clearance.

Kiriakou treats Gorka's position as internally contradictory, given the administration he serves: "we've never in our history had a more pro-Israel president," one who announced shortly before the inauguration "I am a Zionist", "but you're wearing a Nazi party lapel pin."

Restated in 2026

Asked in August 2026 whether an activist with no prospects might still be given a post, Kiriakou answered by way of Gorka's appointment as deputy national security adviser for counterterrorism, and restated the objection in full. Gorka's father, he says, "was an actual Nazi from Hungary", and he draws the distinction deliberately: "not a Nazi sympathizer, not a neo-Nazi."

On the lapel pin he sets out the defence before rejecting it. Gorka wears his father's Nazi party pin on his suit and says he is not a Nazi, that he does it to honour a father he loved, and that he is himself strongly pro-Israel and a Zionist. Kiriakou grants each point and refuses the conclusion: "Okay. Yeah, he's pro-Israel and a Zionist, but it's still a Nazi party lapel pin. So what are you doing?"

See also

- Rudy Giuliani
- John Kiriakou
- Bruce Fein
