Breitbart’s brazen shilling for Trump has been one of this election’s juicier subplots. It peaked, if you’ve somehow forgotten, when Trump’s campaign manager manhandled Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields and Breitbart’s management supported ... the campaign manager. Fields quit, alongside Andrew Breitbart disciple Ben Shapiro, and the rest is history, sort of—the story receded and Breitbart has returned to its normal level of Trump cheerleading.
But on Tuesday, BuzzFeed’s Rosie Gray uncovered FEC filings revealing that Trump’s presidential campaign paid Breitbart’s national security editor Sebastian Gorka $8,000 for “policy consulting” last October. As Gray notes in her piece, Gorka hasn’t written for Breitbart since December; Politico’s Hadas Gold reports that one source told her that his “position is more of an ‘honorary title’ so Breitbart can say they have a big name on staff.” And Gorka’s wife, according to an update to Gray’s piece, “is one of Ted Cruz’s national security advisers” and has also written for Breitbart in the past.
Allegations of close ties between Trump and Breitbart have been around for months—back in August, BuzzFeed reported that some Breitbart staffers thought that Trump had given the site money in exchange for positive coverage—and they’re clearly not going to go away any time soon.