Nevada Republican Senate candidate Danny Tarkanian paid Sebastian Gorka, the former deputy assistant to President Donald Trump with highly questionable credentials and alleged Nazi ties, $5,000 to hang out with him last December.
According to FEC filings first reported on by the Washington Examiner, Tarkanian paid Gorka $5,000 for a one-time “speaking fee,” in December. Such a payment is highly unusual.
According to the Examiner, “A search of FEC records for ‘honorarium’ or ‘speaking’ left the Washington Examiner mostly empty-handed. In the last two election cycles, only three House candidates paid speaking fees (averaging less than $2,000) and not a single Senate candidate paid a speaking fee or honorarium according to this search.”
The campaign told the Examiner that Tarkanian, a perennial candidate backed by former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, was “pleased to have Trump allies with Dr. Gorka.”
“Our campaign, like other campaigns and groups, paid Dr. Gorka for his time to travel out to Nevada to speak at a public engagement,” the campaign said, adding they would be “delighted” to pay Gorka to spend time with them again in the future.
Gorka endorsed Tarkanian on December 20, 2017 — one day after the date on the FEC filing.
I'm proud to support @POTUS @realDonaldTrump and #AmericaFirst. Thank you @SebGorka for your endorsement. We will WIN BIG in Nevada and FIGHT the DC Establishment!! #NVsen pic.twitter.com/IJmj7boATU
— Danny Tarkanian (@DannyTarkanian) December 22, 2017
Tarkanian has touted Gorka’s endorsement and his attacks against his primary rival, incumbent Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV).
“Danny’s opponent is a man who will lie about what he said yesterday,” Gorka said of Heller, as Tarkanian outlines on his campaign website. “[He] now tries to say he’s a supporter of the President when we have him on tape at public events shaming the President and talking about how he’s a bad thing for this nation and how he will not support him; how he’s not interested in repealing Obamacare; how he’s pro-DACA; pro-illegal migration — this is the man that we must defeat, and Danny is the candidate.”
In March, while Gorka was still working in the White House, The Forward reported he was a sworn member of a group called Vitézi Rend, a group that was “under the direction of the Nazi Government of Germany” during World War II, according to the State Department.
Gorka denied having ever taken an oath of loyalty to Vitézi Rend, but he did tell Tablet Magazine that he has “occasionally worn [his] father’s medal and used the ‘v.’ initial to honor his struggle against totalitarianism.”
Despite his alleged Nazi ties, Gorka remained in the White House until August. Among his noteworthy moments in the Trump White House: Gorka said people should stop criticizing white supremacists so much, and argued that a mosque bombing might have been faked by liberals.
True to form, when Gorka left his role at the White House, he complained that it was not Islamophobic enough.
Since leaving the White House, Gorka has inexplicably continued to be paid for whatever services he apparently offers, including as a national security analyst for Fox News, for speaking engagements with the Heritage Foundation, and, now, to hang out with Tarkanian.
