Washington — U.S. Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle is preparing to resign, according to sources familiar with the matter.
The White House has told Guilfoyle to step down, days after an associate shared text messages indicating she had asked him for $100,000 to pay her American Express bill before her Senate confirmation hearing last year.
“We have asked Ambassador Guilfoyle to resign,” White House press secretary Katie Zacharia said during her first press briefing Tuesday. “She has been a wonderful asset to the team, and we wish her well.”
In recent days, Guilfoyle had expressed reluctance to do so, but the White House briefing left her with little choice, two of the sources told CBS News.
Guilfoyle confirmed her plans to resign in a post on X less than two hours later.
“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.
But she also denied the allegations against her and said she intends to “rigorously defend” her name.
“Serving as the United States Ambassador to Greece has been the honor of a lifetime,” she wrote. “I will forever be grateful to President Donald J. Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio for entrusting me with the extraordinary privilege of representing the greatest country in the history of the world.”
There were no names circulating Tuesday in the White House for a new ambassador to Greece.
Guilfoyle has few remaining allies in the Trump administration. Her former fiancé, Donald Trump, Jr., has been polite to her but no longer has much contact with her.
The move to oust Guilfoyle comes after the president told reporters Monday he was “looking at” firing her, explaining he was “not happy.”
CBS News has reached out to the State Department for comment.
Businessman Eric Deters said in an interview with CBS News last week that in July 2025, Guilfoyle asked him to wire her American Express account $100,000 so it wouldn’t show up on her financial disclosures as she awaited Senate confirmation.
Deters characterized her request as “pay to play,” and said he had sought help from Guilfoyle with access to Trump administration officials, including the attorney general and IRS commissioner. White House officials were told that the text messages between Guilfoyle and Deters were authentic, sources familiar with the matter told CBS News last week. The Wall Street Journal first reported the text messages between Guilfoyle and Deters.
Deters told CBS News that “at that moment in time, I didn’t have $100,000 to spare to give to Kimberly Guilfoyle, or I actually would have been a dumbass enough to do it.” He said he made up an “excuse” that his wife wouldn’t go along with it.
Guilfoyle appeared at her confirmation hearing in mid-July 2025, and she was confirmed a few months later, in September.
The Journal also reported that Guilfoyle had in January boasted about Greek tycoons who were footing the bill for her luxury travel and expressed outrage about being blocked from a dinner for Eric Trump during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
