Days before her Senate hearing for the Greece ambassadorship, Kimberly Guilfoyle pressed a major MAGA donor to cover a $100,000 American Express bill, reported messages show.
On July 3, 2025, the former Fox News host messaged Kentucky attorney and Trump donor Eric Deters on Signal and asked him to settle the charge that same day, the New York Post reported, after The Wall Street Journal first detailed the exchange.
Guilfoyle, 57, sent a praying-hands emoji and a PDF with payment instructions from the credit card company. She pushed a wire straight to American Express and stressed speed and discretion.
Six days later she sat before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. On Sept. 18 the Senate confirmed her as U.S. ambassador to Greece on a 51-47 vote.
Her attorney later disputed the authenticity of the messages and offered no specifics. Deters described a different deal: help with his legal and tax problems in exchange for serious money.
The reported July 3 exchange was blunt.
Guilfoyle wrote to Deters:
“Honey please I need you to get this done for me today,”
She followed with payment directions and a secrecy pitch:
“You could just send it here,” “It won’t show up anywhere if you wire money to American Express that’s all that will show. Please.”
Deters, 63, refused. He told her the urgent $100,000 ask would not work and that he could not do it without risking a divorce.
In the messages attributed to him, he answered:
“Your needing $100,000 urgent [sic] unfortunately is not going to work,” “I can’t do this without getting a divorce.”
Guilfoyle kept pressing. She reminded him she had been calling for more than a week and dangled face time with then-IRS Commissioner Billy Long.
“I’ve been calling you for over a week straight. You could be here meeting with [then-IRS Commissioner] Billy Long,” the messages state.
She also promised lasting loyalty inside Trump world, saying she would “be your Trump ride or die, forever and ever.”
Deters was not writing blank checks for friendship. After the 2024 election he grew closer to Guilfoyle and sought her help on two concrete problems.
One was an IRS review of a 2020 deduction he claimed from the sale of a stake in a family business. The other was an Ohio doctor charged with defrauding insurers by performing unnecessary surgeries on children. The doctor had fled to Pakistan. Deters wanted help on extradition.
He had promised Guilfoyle as much as $1 million if she got his legal and tax issues in front of top Trump administration officials.
Federal Election Commission records show Deters donated $125,000 to a pro-Trump PAC in 2022. He also founded Freedom Fest, an anti-COVID-mandate event launched in 2020. Guilfoyle was paid $300,000 in total to speak at later editions alongside other Trump family members.
After the Journal reached him, Deters offered a short verdict on the relationship:
“She never came through on anything,”
The July money request did not come from nowhere. Weeks after President Trump nominated her, and in January 2025 messages, Guilfoyle urged Deters to stop putting things in writing.
She told him:
“Eric, I really wish you would stop papering all these things. It’s really dangerous and not helpful to you or me while you could simply just call me on Signal,”
Another line raised the stakes in plain language:
“What a nightmare, you’ll literally cost me my ambassadorship stop writing,”
Signal was the channel she preferred. The same channel carried the July 3 bill demand and the AmEx wire instructions.
Guilfoyle appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee six days after the July 3 messages. The full Senate confirmed her 51-47 on Sept. 18. She took up the post at the American Embassy in Athens.
When the message story surfaced, an official defending her record told the Journal the nomination had been properly handled.
“Guilfoyle’s career in and out of public service is guided by deep and abiding values. She was fully vetted by the bipartisan Senate Foreign Relations Committee and confirmed by the U.S. Senate. The ambassador remains committed to representing the American people with dedication and integrity,” the official said.
The embassy did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Guilfoyle’s attorney, Jesse Binnall, told the Journal she disputed the authenticity of the messages but gave no detailed account of why. Binnall did not immediately respond to the Post.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in Greece on an official visit, declined to engage the reporting when journalists asked. Guilfoyle looked on as he answered.
“You guys walk around thinking that because some source told you something and you reported it, it’s the gospel,” Rubio said. “It’s not the gospel. It’s not the gospel for me. That’s not the way we do things.”
Lay the dates side by side. Nomination. January messages warning that written records could cost her the ambassadorship. July 3 plea for a $100,000 AmEx payment wired in a way she said would not show up. A Senate hearing six days later. Confirmation in September. A donor who says she never delivered the help he wanted on the IRS and the fugitive doctor.
Deters wanted government attention. Guilfoyle, per the reported texts, wanted a personal credit card bill gone before she faced senators. She pointed him toward the IRS commissioner by name. She asked for a wire routed so that “all that will show” was a payment to American Express.
Binnall’s authenticity dispute sits on the record without supporting detail. Deters’s refusal sits on the record too. So does the confirmation vote. So does the $125,000 PAC donation and the $300,000 in speaking fees tied to the donor’s festival.
None of that is small talk. Ambassadors speak for the United States. Donors who want tax problems fixed and extraditions chased are asking for the power of the state. When personal bills and official access land in the same private chat, voters get to examine the arrangement in daylight.
Public office is not a private tab for friendly patrons to pick up, and Americans are right to demand that line stay bright.
