The Trump administration pulled a grant awarded to a group committed to deradicalizing white supremacists at the urging of Trump aide Katharine Gorka, weeks before white nationalist groups and counter-protesters clashed in Charlottesville, Va., on Saturday, according to a report.
The Obama administration awarded $400,000 to the organization Life After Hate in January through its Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) program. Life After Hate was the only group awarded a grant that focused specifically on combating white supremacy.
But the money wasn’t immediately disbursed to the group, and then-Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly ordered a review of the CVE program after President Trump’s inauguration, which included a look at the groups who were initially awarded CVE grants.
According to the Huffington Post, aides to Trump, including Gorka, worked to eliminate Life After Hate’s grant and wanted to direct all grants awarded through the CVE program toward groups combating “radical Islamic terrorism.”
Gorka previously worked on the Trump transition team, and currently is an adviser in the Department of Homeland Security’s policy office.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security said Gorka has been “integral in helping the department broaden its efforts to focus on all forms of extremism,” and said her work includes efforts to address “everything from global jihadist threats to domestic terrorists.”
The spokeswoman also said the department is “focused on combating terrorism, both foreign and domestic” and rebuffed reports suggesting Life After Hate did not receive a grant because of its ideological focus.
Gorka met with George Selim, who led the CVE program until his resignation last month, and told him and his deputy, David Gersten, that she disagreed with the Obama administration’s approach to fighting violent extremism. Nate Snyder, an adviser on CVE and former Obama administration counterterrorism official, relayed that conversation to the Huffington Post.
After Kelly’s review of the CVE program was completed, the Department of Homeland Security issued a new list of grant recipients in June. Twelve groups that were announced in January did not receive an offer for a grant, according to the Department of Homeland Security, including Life After Hate.
The Department of Homeland Security also decided not to award a grant to the Muslim Public Affairs Council, an advocacy group that was initially given $393,800.
The agency said it is now prioritizing groups working with law enforcement, as well as each proposal’s likelihood of effectiveness and sustainability, and decided money initially awarded to Life After Hate and the Muslim Public Affairs Council will instead be disbursed to law enforcement agencies, according to the Huffington Post.
While the Department of Homeland Security’s reviewed the CVE program, the department, along with the FBI, issued an intelligence bulletin in May warning that the white supremacist movement “likely will continue to pose a threat of lethal violence over the next year,” according to a copy of the document obtained by Foreign Policy.
White nationalists rallied in Charlottesville on Saturday to protest the removal of a statue of Civil War general Robert E. Lee. During the rally, counter-protesters clashed with the white nationalists.
One woman died and 19 other people were injured after a 20-year-old named James Alex Fields Jr. plowed his car into a crowd of counter-demonstrators. Fields was charged with second-degree murder Monday.
After the events in Charlottesville, Trump was criticized for failing to denounce specific white nationalist groups who rallied in the city when he gave initial remarks Saturday.
But during a statement Monday, Trump specifically condemned “the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups.”
