Washington — The White House told U.S. Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle to resign, days after an associate shared text messages indicating she had asked him for $100,000 to pay her American Express bill before her Senate confirmation hearing.
“We have asked Ambassador Guilfoyle to resign,” White House press secretary Katie Zacharia said during her first press briefing Tuesday. “She has been a wonderful asset to the team, and we wish her well.”
The move comes after the president told reporters Monday he was “looking at” firing Guilfoyle, explaining he was “not happy.”
Zacharia declined to say whether a new ambassador has been selected to succeed Guilfoyle. CBS News has reached out to the State Department for comment.
Businessman Eric Deters said in an interview with CBS News last week that in July 2025, Guilfoyle asked him to wire her American Express account $100,000 so it wouldn’t show up on her financial disclosures as she awaited Senate confirmation.
Deters characterized her request as “pay to play,” and said he had sought help from Guilfoyle with access to Trump administration officials, including the attorney general and IRS commissioner. White House officials were told that the text messages between Guilfoyle and Deters were authentic, sources familiar with the matter told CBS News last week. The Wall Street Journal first reported the text messages between Guilfoyle and Deters.
Deters told CBS News that “at that moment in time, I didn’t have $100,000 to spare to give to Kimberly Guilfoyle, or I actually would have been a dumbass enough to do it.” He said he made up an “excuse” that his wife wouldn’t go along with it.
Guilfoyle appeared at her confirmation hearing in mid-July 2025, and she was confirmed a few months later, in September.
The Journal also reported that Guilfoyle, who was once Donald Trump Jr.’s fiancee, had in January boasted about Greek tycoons who were footing the bill for her luxury travel and expressed outrage about being blocked from a dinner for Eric Trump during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
