In the wake of the surprising announcement Friday that President Donald Trump's deputy assistant Sebastian Gorka was resigning, reports began leaking out of the White House suggesting that he didn't do it intentionally, but rather that he was forced out.
"Sebastian Gorka did not resign, but I can confirm he no longer works at the White House," said a White House source to reporters.
The resignation was confirmed Friday to the political website, The Federalist, which published the scathing resignation letter from Gorka blaming unnamed elements in the Trump administration that he characterized as not wanting to "make America great again."
“[G]iven recent events, it is clear to me that forces that do not support the MAGA promise are – for now – ascendant within the White House,” Gorka said in the letter. “As a result, the best and most effective way I can support you, Mr. President, is from outside the People’s House.”
A report from Buzzfeed said that Gorka planned to give the letter Monday to White House chief of staff Gen. John Kelly, but the letter leaked instead.
Maggie Haberman of the New York Times tweeted a different story from her sources.
She said, "two admin officials tell me Gorka was pushed out, did not resign, had been on vacation for weeks."
CNN's Kaitlyn Collins added another detail explaining the motivation for the resignation.
"Gorka resigned to Kelly [because] it was clear to him he would not be allowed to have a meaningful role going forward, a White House official says," she tweeted.
Bloomberg's Jennifer Jacobs said her sources told conflicting stories following the general pattern of the others.
Yahoo News reported that Gorka resigned after Kelly revoked his security clearance, making it difficult if not impossible for him to continue fulfilling his ill-defined job.
A source to the Daily Beast echoed Gorka's sentiment that "non-MAGA" elements in the administration were undermining the promises made by Trump during the campaign, and seizing more power at the White House.
“It’s clear at this point that people like H.R. McMaster, Dina Habib Powell, Gary Cohn, Jared Kushner, and Ivanka Trump have their own agenda that is drastically different from what President Trump campaigned on,” the source said.
“As the president enters this new period of darkness in his administration," they added, "it’s clear he will need as many allies as he can get on the outside who will actually defend him unlike the aforementioned names—and there is nobody better than Dr. Sebastian Gorka to do that.”
Gorka was exceedingly popular among the base for his continued and unrelenting assaults on the media and the left in appearances on cable news shows that would often go viral. He said that he was very willing to be Trump's "pit bull," which many expect to be even more true now that he's been released from the administration.
