No, The Sebastian Gorka Story Has Not Unraveled

On the website Tablet, writer Liel Leibovitz takes the Forward to task for our report on claims by leaders of the far-right Hungarian group Vitézi Rend that Sebastian Gorka, President Trump’s counter-terrorism aide, is one of their members.
In his piece, Leibovitz reports that he spoke with Gorka, who firmly denied the affiliation.
“I have never been a member of the Vitez Rend,” he reports Gorka telling him. “I have never taken an oath of loyalty to the Vitez Rend. Since childhood, I have occasionally worn my father’s medal and used the ‘v.’ initial to honor his struggle against totalitarianism.”
Strangely, when Gorka issued his own formal and official statement through the White House Press Office addressing the Forward’s story Thursday evening, this denial was nowhere to be found.
“I’ve been a committed opponent of anti-Semitism, racism and totalitarianism all my life,” the statement said. “Any suggestion otherwise is false and outrageous.”
Gorka’s official statement did not address assertions by Vitézi Rend leaders that he had sworn a lifelong oath of allegiance to their group, which is listed by the U.S. State Department as having been “under the direction of the Nazi Government of Germany” during World War II; nor did it address the question of whether he had disclosed this reported affiliation to government officials when he immigrated to the United States or later, when he obtained American citizenship, as each process would require.
In his article criticizing the Forward, Leibovitz cites only one source from our story, Vitézi Rend leader Kornél Pintér, leaving readers with the wrong impression that Pinter was our only source.
In fact, the story cites two Vitézi Rend leaders who explicitly confirmed Gorka’s membership in the group and a third who said only sworn members of the group are allowed to use the honorific initial ‘v.’ as an addition to their name, as Gorka has on various official occasions.
Moreover, Leibovitz chose to ignore or dismiss the explicit assertion of Pintér in his quote:
“Of course he was sworn in,” Pintér told the Forward in a phone interview. “I met with him in Sopron [a city near Hungary’s border with Austria]. His father introduced him.”
Leibovitz dismisses Pintér’s assertion affirming Gorka’s Vitézi Rend membership by arguing that Pintér “isn’t saying that he’d witnessed Gorka’s swearing in; he’s merely saying that he’d met the man because he was an associate of Gorka’s father Paul.”
The question is not whether Pintér personally witnessed Gorka’s initiation into the order, but whether he reliably knew of it. As Pintér noted, he knew the family intimately, and talked at length about his respect for the elder Gorka, telling reporter Lili Bayer that Sebastian Gorka did take the oath to the organization.
To clear up any doubt, we have posted on-line an audio recording of the complete interview (in Hungarian) that Bayer conducted with Pintér.
As noted in the story, Pintér’s affirmation of Gorka’s membership was confirmed by a second source, Gyula Soltész, a highly placed national leader of the Vitézi Rend who has access to the group’s membership rolls.
And there is a third source, not cited in the story. In a March 14 email, Imre Fehér, another local Vitézi Rend leader, wrote Bayer, “In his phone conversation with you last night, Kornél Pintér briefed you in detail about vitéz Sebastian Gorka and his late father,” urging her to contact the organization’s leader, if necessary, for further information. [Emphasis added for “vitéz,” which is the honorific the group gives to sworn members of the organization, thus constituting an additional confirmation.]
While reporting, Bayer contacted Gorka by email two times each at his office and home email accounts, asking if he was a member. He never responded, as we reported.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
2X match on all Passover gifts!
Most Popular
- 1
Film & TV What Gal Gadot has said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- 2
News A Jewish Republican and Muslim Democrat are suddenly in a tight race for a special seat in Congress
- 3
Fast Forward The NCAA men’s Final Four has 3 Jewish coaches
- 4
Culture How two Jewish names — Kohen and Mira — are dividing red and blue states
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward ‘Another Jewish warrior’: Fine wins special election for U.S. House seat
-
Fast Forward Cory Booker proclaims, ‘Hineni’ — I am here — 19 hours into anti-Trump Senate speech
-
Opinion In Trump’s war against campus antisemitism, hate the tactics but don’t ignore the problem
-
Yiddish כ׳בענק נאָך די וועלטלעכע ייִדן וואָס האָבן אָפּגעריכט אַ טראַדיציאָנעלן סדר Longing for those secular Jews who led a traditional seder
מײַן פֿעטער יונה האָט נישט געהיט שבת און כּשרות אָבער בײַם אָפּריכטן דעם סדר האָט ער געקלונגען ווי אַ פֿרומער ייִד
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.