The White House has asked Kimberly Guilfoyle, the ambassador to Greece, to resign, new White House press secretary Katie Zacharia told reporters on Tuesday, a day after President Donald Trump said he was considering firing her after allegations she asked a political donor for $100,000 to pay her personal American Express bill.
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Guilfoyle, who was once the fiancée of Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr., has denied any wrongdoing, but the State Department’s Office of Inspector General has begun an investigation into her conduct.
“We have asked Ambassador Guilfoyle to resign. She has been a wonderful asset to the team, and we wish her well,” Zacharia told reporters at her first White House news conference, an unusually short debut in which she took just three questions before returning to her office.
In a statement Tuesday on X, Guilfoyle described her tenure as ambassador as “the honor of a lifetime.” She also once again denied the accusations against her, saying “these allegations are false, and I intend to vigorously defend my name, my reputation, and my integrity.”
“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,” she wrote.
Guilfoyle is a former prosecutor and television personality who was confirmed as ambassador last year, months after she and Trump Jr. broke off their engagement. Greek officials have appreciated her direct relationship with the president, but her time in Athens has been marked by frustrations from her staff and allegations of hard partying.
Trump, asked by a reporter on Tuesday after the announcement whether he was surprised that someone who was “almost like a member of your family” could be caught up in scandal, distanced himself from her.
“She wasn’t a member of my family. She I guess dated my son a long time ago,” he said. The couple announced their split in December 2024. “She went to Greece, she was doing a good job, but we didn’t like what we were reading,” he said.
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Republican donor Eric Deters, a longtime Trump supporter who once ran for Congress in Kentucky, provided The Washington Post with documents, emails and text messages detailing his interactions with Guilfoyle, whom he sought to enlist in several matters before she was confirmed as ambassador.
In the run-up to her confirmation last year, the text messages show she asked Deters to help pay off her credit card bill and promised to be his connection to Trumpworld. Deters didn’t make the payment, saying that if he did, his wife would divorce him. Guilfoyle offered to help him make connections to the IRS and the White House.
Guilfoyle has denied the authenticity of the documents. The Wall Street Journal first reported on the allegations.
Deters’s allegations were the latest in a string regarding Guilfoyle’s conduct as ambassador in Athens, where she has embraced the social circuit and the perks and trappings that come with being a U.S. envoy in a country dependent on good relations with Washington.
Guilfoyle had also sought to promote a Greek energy company, including one of its lobbyists, 39-year-old Christos Marafatsos, in so many of her meetings without explaining his role that some officials mistook him for her chief of staff, the Journal reported.
Guilfoyle had built the ambassadorship into a significant role, traveling across Europe to promote energy deals with U.S. companies that would help the continent reduce its consumption of Russian energy.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited Athens just last week, delivering a speech on Western values with the Acropolis as his backdrop and being accompanied by Guilfoyle to his meetings with senior Greek leaders. At the Athens airport on his arrival, Guilfoyle enveloped him in a warm hug. Rubio told reporters in Greece that Guilfoyle had been a “strong ambassador” to the country.
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