Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton has laid into Sebastian Gorka, the president-elect’s pick for counter-terrorism chief, as a “conman” whose selection is not “going to bode well for counter-terrorism efforts when the [national security council’s] senior director is somebody like that”.

Trump praised Gorka, who was born in the UK to Hungarian parents, as a “tireless advocate for the America First Agenda and the MAGA Movement”.

But Bolton came out swinging at Gorka on Friday. The arch-conservative, who served in the Reagan, George W Bush and first Trump administrations, has set out his stall against many of Trump’s picks, including former Democrat and Iraq veteran Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence, and told CNN that he “wouldn’t have him in any US government”.

Earlier this week, Bolton told NewsNation’s The Hill that up until Gorka was nominated by Trump as a deputy assistant to the president and the senior director for counter-terrorism, he would have said that Gabbard’s nomination “was the worst cabinet appointment in recent American history”.

Bolton’s not alone in his criticism. Democratic National Committee spokesperson Alex Floyd called Gorka “a far-right extremist who is as dangerous as he is unqualified to lead America’s counter-terrorism strategy”.

Gorka is outspokenly pro-Israel and supportive of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and has faced allegations of Islamophobia for supporting Trump’s 2017 Muslim travel ban that barred travel to the US for 90 days for visitors from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

Gorka also claimed that Islam is “not a religion of peace”. He’s come under fire for showing up at Trump’s 2017 inaugural ball wearing an honorary medal from the Hungarian nationalist organization Vitézi Rend and for a previous position serving as an adviser to the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán.

Bolton said Gorka “needs a full FBI field background investigation” and his “education claims” need to be investigated.

“I think he is a perfect example of somebody who owes his position purely to Donald Trump,” Bolton told the outlet. “He doesn’t display loyalty. He displays fealty. And that’s what Trump wants. …

“He doesn’t want Gorka’s opinions, he wants Gorka to say ‘yes, sir’, and I’m fully confident that’s exactly what will happen no matter what it is Trump says.”

This article was amended on 24 November 2024. An earlier version referred to Sebastian Gorka as “an immigrant from Hungary”; to clarify, Gorka was born to Hungarian parents in the UK, where he was raised, and he later moved to Hungary as an adult.