It began out so effectively for her.
Kimberly Guilfoyle, the U.S. ambassador to Greece till she was successfully fired on reside tv on Tuesday when the brand new White Home press secretary mentioned that President Trump had requested for her resignation, was at one level engaged to Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son. The couple owned a $9.7 million residence in Florida, appeared at Trump rallies collectively and despatched one another adoring posts on Instagram.
“Falling in love with my fiancé increasingly more daily,” Ms. Guilfoyle posted on Instagram on Valentine’s Day 2022. “@donaldjtrumpjr, you’re my finest buddy, my help system and my perpetually man.”
“Thanks for all the time being there it doesn’t matter what the haters are throwing our means,” he posted in 2024. “I really like you.”
At the moment, the junior Mr. Trump is married to a Florida socialite and mannequin. And Ms. Guilfoyle, who was nominated as ambassador to Greece by the president quickly after her engagement to his son was damaged off two years in the past, is out of a job after a sequence of damning studies in The Wall Avenue Journal, together with that she requested a Republican donor to repay $100,000 on her American Categorical bank card simply earlier than her Senate affirmation listening to in July 2025.
The rise and fall of Ms. Guilfoyle, 57, was not a shock on the White Home, the place many noticed her as a flamboyant celebration lady with questionable judgment.
Her supporters mentioned she was in actual fact a substantive particular person beneath the glitz. Ms. Guilfoyle, a former Fox Information host and a former prosecutor in San Francisco and Los Angeles, was as soon as married to Gavin Newsom, who would go on to change into governor of California and one of many Democratic Social gathering’s most outspoken critics of Mr. Trump.
Both means, Ms. Guilfoyle was a Trump insider with a outstanding position within the household and its political operation. The president’s swiftness in firing her confirmed his willingness to chop off anybody who turns into a legal responsibility and a humiliation. However it additionally left her with little purpose to stay loyal to the president and his household at a time when Mr. Trump’s political authority is ebbing.
In saying her resignation, she decried what she referred to as false accusations and mentioned she would vigorously defend her popularity. Talking to reporters outdoors the White Home, Mr. Trump did little to recommend he would proceed to maintain her shut.
“She wasn’t a member of my household,” he mentioned. “She, I assume, dated my son a very long time in the past.”
Ms. Guilfoyle, who arrived in Greece lower than a yr in the past, was a extremely uncommon alternative for the position to start with.
In a way, it was Don Jr. who obtained her the job, not directly. In December 2024 he and the socialite and mannequin, Bettina Anderson, have been seen holding fingers as they left a Palm Seaside restaurant. The following day, President-elect Trump introduced that Ms. Guilfoyle was his choose to be ambassador to Greece.
The timing urged the president needed her in a foreign country at a clumsy time for Don Jr., who married Ms. Anderson this yr. Ms. Guilfoyle’s allies mentioned that was not the case, though Greeks on the time puzzled in the event that they have been merely getting the girl who had been jilted by the president’s son.
In Athens, Ms. Guilfoyle turned a sensation as quickly as she arrived, on the personal jet of a multimillionaire Greek American businessman. She wore a partly sheer black night gown to a Thanksgiving week dinner, joked with the Greek president when she offered her credentials that she was engaged on discovering a brand new husband and stayed out till the small hours of the morning at Athens nightclubs.
“Oh, I wasn’t late, it was like earlier than 3,” Ms. Guilfoyle mentioned in an interview with The New York Instances final yr, referring to how she had turned up at a nightclub for the 1:30 a.m. premiere present of her buddy, one of many nation’s most well-known pop singers, Konstantinos Argiros.
Paparazzi adopted her all over the place, however Greeks on the time mentioned Ms. Guilfoyle labored as exhausting as she performed. By the character of her place and what they noticed as her entry to the White Home, they seen her as one of the crucial essential folks within the nation. Principally forgotten have been her phrases on Fox throughout the Greek monetary disaster in 2015, when she referred to as Greeks “freeloaders” who must be punished like a canine that “pees on the rug.”
Early on, Ms. Guilfoyle introduced two essential enterprise offers, the event of a U.S.-backed port close to Athens and the exploration for pure gasoline off the island of Corfu. Each have been within the works lengthy earlier than she arrived in Athens, however Greek officers mentioned she had jumped into the plans months earlier and needed them introduced on her watch.
Adonis Georgiadis, Greece’s well being minister and a vice chairman of the governing conservative celebration, was amongst these impressed. “When she was first named, the folks have been, ‘What’s that?’” he mentioned. But when she delivers, he mentioned, “who cares if she has a see-through gown?”
Her downfall started final month, after The Journal reported about Ms. Guilfoyle and her potential conflicts of curiosity over power offers within the Balkans. However it accelerated with the report this month that she had secretly begged a Republican donor to pay her bank card debt whereas she was ready to be confirmed as ambassador.
“Honey please I want you to get this performed for me as we speak,” she wrote in what seemed to be a textual content message to the donor, Eric Deters. Mr. Deters supplied what seemed to be screenshots of their correspondence to The Instances after the preliminary report by The Journal.
It’s unclear what Ms. Guilfoyle will do now. As soon as a authorized analyst for CNN and ABC in New York, her profession at Fox resulted in 2018, when two folks conversant in her exit informed The Instances on the situation of anonymity that she had been compelled to depart over questions on inappropriate office conduct.
The New Yorker reported two years later that Ms. Guilfoyle had been compelled out due to sexual harassment allegations introduced by a feminine assistant, together with that she had confirmed the assistant pictures of genitalia of males with whom Ms. Guilfoyle had had sexual relations.
The journal reported that the assistant had obtained a settlement of greater than $4 million. Ms. Guilfoyle denied the allegations by her lawyer on the time, and declined to remark within the Instances interview final yr.
She was immensely pleased with her ambassadorship. On the finish of the interview, she identified a framed doc close to the doorway to her official residence, Jefferson Home, that listed all of the American ambassadors to Greece since 1948. Each one till Ms. Guilfoyle was a person.
“Right here I’m,” she mentioned, pointing to her title. “I virtually cried.”
Edward Wong contributed reporting from Athens.