Kimberly Guilfoyle Resigns as Ambassador to Greece

 

Kimberly Guilfoyle Resigns as Ambassador to Greece

 

Ms. Guilfoyle was asked to quit by the White House after a string of damaging reports, including that she had asked a Republican donor to pay off a credit card.

 

Tyler Pager

By Tyler Pager

Oct. 13, 2026

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/13/us/politics/kimberly-guilfoyle-resign.html

 

Kimberly Guilfoyle resigned as the U.S. ambassador to Greece on Tuesday after the White House asked her to do so following a string of damaging reports, including that she had asked a Republican donor to pay off her credit card.

 

In response to a question from a reporter about Ms. Guilfoyle’s status, President Trump’s new press secretary, Katie Zacharia, said: “We have asked Ambassador Guilfoyle to resign. She has been a wonderful asset to the team, and we wish her well.”

 

Mr. Trump said Tuesday that Ms. Guilfoyle “was doing a good job” but that he “didn’t like what I read.” The president also downplayed his connection to Ms. Guilfoyle, who was once engaged to his oldest son, Donald Trump Jr.

 

“She wasn’t a member of my family,” he told reporters before leaving the White House for Alaska. “She, I guess, dated my son a long time ago.”

 

In a lengthy post on social media, Ms. Guilfoyle said that her time as ambassador was “coming to an end” and that she planned to “vigorously defend my name, my reputation, and my integrity.”

 

“I will not allow false accusations to define my decades of public service,” she wrote.

 

A donor, Eric Deters, first told The Wall Street Journal that Ms. Guilfoyle asked him to wire her $100,000 to pay off her American Express card just before her Senate confirmation hearing in July 2025. According to messages Mr. Deters provided to The New York Times, Ms. Guilfoyle promised to serve as his “ride or die in Trump world” if he sent her the money.

 

Ms. Guilfoyle was one of the first ambassadors to be nominated in the president’s second term. In Greece, she has been a highly visible ambassador, appearing on the cover of Vogue Greece and at parties around Athens. Ms. Guilfoyle told The Times last year that her active social life demonstrated her commitment to the job.

 

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In her resignation post, Ms. Guilfoyle said she was proud of her work to expand American liquefied natural gas exports to Europe and strengthen defense and security partnerships with NATO.

 

In Athens, the reports of her potential conflicts of interest have generated exasperation.

 

“The fact that they would send someone like that here, with no tact or diplomacy skills, shows how low we rank in Trump’s priorities, how insignificant Greece is for them,” Maria Stefanou, a 68-year-old retiree, told The Times last week.

 

Greece’s foreign ministry declined to comment, but opposition parties said the reports that had led to Ms. Guilfoyle’s resignation raised important questions about foreign interference in Greek politics and the country’s business interests.

 

“The decision to remove the ambassador implicitly lends credence to these reports, which in essence confirm a model of transactional diplomacy, far removed from the principled foreign policy that Greece should be pursuing,” Dimitris Mantzos, a spokesman for Pasok, the main center-left opposition party, wrote in a statement.

 

Mr. Mantzos said his party had asked for details about the energy and defense agreements signed last week during Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s visit to Athens.

 

Ms. Guilfoyle welcomed Mr. Rubio upon his arrival, and the two spent much of the trip together, as is customary when a top official travels overseas. When asked about the reports, Mr. Rubio defended Ms. Guilfoyle and said she “has been a strong ambassador.” But when the Journal article with Mr. Deters’s allegations published shortly before Mr. Rubio departed Greece, he brushed aside questions about the matter, saying, “I’m not going to comment on a story that literally posted a few hours ago.”

 

The resignation caps a remarkable rise and fall for Ms. Guilfoyle, a former Fox News personality. Decades ago, she was married to Gavin Newsom, then the mayor of San Francisco, and in 2004, Harper’s Bazaar predicted their marriage would be “one of the most glamorous political unions since Jack and Jackie.” They divorced in 2006.

 

Ms. Guilfoyle then became a legal analyst for CNN and ABC before joining Fox News. She was forced out of Fox in 2018 over questions about inappropriate workplace behavior. That same year, she started dating Donald Trump Jr. and working for a pro-Trump super PAC. The two were engaged in 2020, and Ms. Guilfoyle spoke at both the 2020 and 2024 Republican National Conventions. In May, the president’s son married Bettina Anderson, a Palm Beach socialite.

 

“While my time as Ambassador may be coming to an end, my commitment to President Trump, the America First movement, and the country I love will never end,” Ms. Guilfoyle wrote on social media.

 

Niki Kitsantonis and Edward Wong contributed reporting from Athens.

 

Tyler Pager is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.