Sloppy secrets: Trump trapped by Kimberly Guilfoyle

Conservative Nick Catoggio tells the Dispatch that “it’s a rare case in which a public official was smart enough to have consciousness of guilt about her crime but not smart enough to avoid putting the evidence against her in encrypted digital writing.”

That’s the situation facing President Donald Trump’s most recent embattled ambassador, Kimberly Guilfoyle. Her alleged $100,000 shakedown of Trump campaign donor Eric Deters is making waves after Deter shared texts of Guilfoyle’s coercion to pay off her AmEx bill with the Wall Street Journal.

But Catoggio can’t seem to get past the existence of Guilfoyle’s apparent self-awareness coupled with her sloppy follow-through.

“Eric, I really wish you would stop papering all these things,” she texted Deters at one point. At another, she wrote, “What a nightmare you’ll literally cost me my ambassadorship stop writing.” And yet, Catoggio said she made no solid effort to hide her behavior.

“She seems to have assumed that Deters would never reveal the texts she had sent him, even if she stiffed him on the favor he sought. Imagine her shock at seeing a Trump courtier behave dishonorably,” said Catoggio.

The Wall Street Journal also reported that during a recent visit to Bulgaria this year, Guilfoyle allegedly told people that if they wanted natural gas from America, they should do business with the company owned by a lobbyist who had taken to hanging around her meetings with foreign officials.

“How many AmEx bills did he pay to earn that kind of referral? And how many others whom we don’t (yet) know about have also covered some of her debts?” asked Catoggio, citing The Bulwark’s Sam Stein alleging that “we’re hearing that there are more Guilfoyle stories coming.”

This particular scandal might have more legs than the average Trump scandal, with Americans starting to pay attention to political news as the November 3 election approaches. And Guilfoyle is no faceless bureaucrat, said Catoggio. Her Fox News gig made her famous, after all. And her allegations about her dealings with Deters are “unusually straightforward for a bribery story.”

“’Pay my credit card bill if you want a favor’ is a solicitation a sixth-grader could grasp,” said Catoggio.

But despite the perceived certainty of Guilfoyle’s criminality, Catoggio said this is one corrupt Trump lackey who probably isn’t getting fired anytime soon, despite the grenade she landed directly “in the White House’s lap.”

“The president has no good options on how to deal with Guilfoyle,” said Catoggio. “Leaving her in the job after the Journal exposé would amount to endorsing what she’s done, essentially taking ownership of the scandal, but she’s assuredly learned too much about Trump family malfeasance over the years for him to risk alienating her by firing her.”

“My guess is that he’ll do what he usually does and lateral her over to some private-sector position, buying her silence with a well-paid sinecure,” he said.