President Donald Trump is weighing firing the US ambassador to Greece, Kimberly Guilfoyle, following reports of her alleged improper behaviour in Athens, which she has denied.
Asked if he was considering sacking her, Trump told reporters at the White House: “We’re looking at it. Yeah, we’re not happy.” She is the ex-fiancée of the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr.
The Wall Street Journal reported Guilfoyle allegedly asked a Trump donor to pay her hefty credit card bill in exchange for access to his administration.
Her lawyers denied any wrongdoing by Guilfoyle and said she was owed the money for speaking engagements and consulting work for the donor.
Guilfoyle, 57, a former Fox News host and ex-wife of California Governor Gavin Newsom, was appointed as envoy to Athens in December 2024, a month before Trump returned to the White House as president.
At the time, Trump said “her extensive experience and leadership in law, media and politics, along with her sharp intellect make her supremely qualified” to represent the US abroad.
A series of text messages seen by the BBC – and first reported by the Wall Street Journal – appear to show Guilfoyle asking for the money from Eric Deters, a long-time Trump ally.
“It won’t show up anywhere if you wire money to American Express,” she wrote in one Signal message.
In another message – dated just days before her US Senate confirmation hearing last July – Guilfoyle wrote: “Honey please I need you to get this done for me today.”
Deters never sent the money. Guilfoyle’s lawyers have disputed the authenticity of the messages.
They said in a two-page statement on 12 October that Deters owed Guilfoyle about $150,000 for speeches and consulting work that she performed for him long before her ambassadorship.
“Asking a client to pay for work already done is not corruption. It is the opposite of corruption,” they said.
Audio recordings obtained by the Wall Street Journal reportedly include Guilfoyle boasting of her connections to prominent Greek business tycoons who she said bankrolled luxury travel and flights on private jets.
According to the newspaper, she also boasted to an official in Athens that the US could topple the Greek government.
Democrats on the Senate and House foreign affairs committees have been calling on the state department to investigate her conduct in Greece.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was pictured with Guilfoyle last week during his trip to Athens, was also reported to be unhappy with her in light of the allegations.
A former prosecutor in San Francisco and Los Angeles, she joined Fox News in 2006.
After leaving broadcasting in 2018, she joined the Trump campaign. The same year, she began a relationship with Donald Jr, and the couple eventually became engaged.
The pair reportedly parted ways in 2024, around the time she was appointed to the position in Greece.
Donald Jr wed socialite and model Bettina Anderson last year in Florida.
