Former Fox News personality and U.S. Ambassador to Greece, Kimberly Guilfoyle, has been caught in a pay-for-influence scandal in which she was trying to shake down a donor to President Donald Trump. Secretary of State Marco Rubio hasn't quite crafted a response yet. Instead, he made a rambling attack on the media for asking questions.
According to a Wednesday Wall Street Journal report, Guilfoyle needed Eric Deters, a former congressional candidate in Kentucky, to pay off her $100,000 American Express bill and she needed it to be done secretly.
Deters said that he desperately needed someone in the Trump administration to help on some personal tax and legal issues. Guilfoyle said that she could use her influence as Donald Trump Jr.'s ex to connect him with the new chief of the IRS and the Justice Department so he could lobby his case. She just needed the $100,000 first.
Messaging via Signal, Guilfoyle begged, with a prayer emoji, “Honey please I need you to get this done for me today. You could just send it here."
She wrote the message on July 3, 2025. Her confirmation hearing was on July 9.
“It won’t show up anywhere if you wire money to American Express. Please.”
Deters never paid, explaining that it would cost him his marriage. There were hundreds of messages that went back and forth about the matter. Guilfoyle's lawyer isn't denying the messages, but he's disputing the "authenticity."
A U.S. Embassy official told the WSJ, “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.”
It comes amid a series of scandals involving Trump administration corruption allegations, and while Americans indicate that political corruption is among the top issues they care about most this election.
When asked about it by the press on Thursday in Greece, Rubio rambled, instead attacking reporters for demanding answers hours after the report had come out.
"Yeah, guys, let me tell you something. You're gonna ask me this. You're going to ask me again in Portugal... I get the game, okay? I've been in this for a long time. The game is someone gives information to a newspaper or a media outlet. The media outlet reports it. You immediately turn to me and say, 'I need you to respond to our reporting about it.' That's not the way this process works," Rubio claimed.
"Like, our job is not to respond every time someone decides to give the media something without any advance warning, without having any chance to look at it and see what's in there," he continued. "That's not the way — that's not the way you'd run an organization. And that's not a serious way to conduct the policy of our country. So, I'm not gonna comment on a story that's literally a few hours ago. I get the game, okay? I've been in this for a long time. Within hours of members of Congress writing a letter demanding you answer questions or something, we've never seen before, or I don't even know if it's true or not true. So, it's not gonna work that way. And it's most certainly not gonna work that way when I'm sitting in another country."
They continued to ask questions about the reporting and again, Rubio repeated, "Guys, I'm not gonna play this game with you, okay? You guys write this story, and then your editors tell you, make sure you get a comment from him on something we haven't seen."
While Guilfoyle was with Rubio in Greece, videos showed her off to the side when it was time for Rubio to shake hands and leave. Before that, she'd been walking with him.
He hasn't denied the reports or called them "fake news" yet.
