The order came on Tuesday, 13 October, in two sentences, and the second one was a compliment. “We have asked Ambassador Guilfoyle to resign,” the White House press secretary, Katie Zacharia, told reporters, Al Jazeera reported. “She has been a wonderful asset to the team, and we wish her well.”
Courts have always dismissed people this way, praising them on the way out. The praise doesn’t change what has happened. It tells everyone watching that the court still thinks of itself as gracious.
It was also Zacharia’s first briefing. She came to the podium from Trump Media, and she was appointed only after the White House had gone 82 days without a press secretary. One of the first things she had to announce was that a member of the president’s circle had been sent away.
The ambassador
Kimberly Guilfoyle came to Athens from inside the family. She had been a prosecutor in California and then a host on Fox News Channel. She was engaged to the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., for four years, and after they separated she was chosen to represent the United States in Greece. She took up the post in September 2025, the Associated Press reported.
Her time there lasted a little over a year.
The charges
The trouble started in print. Starting in late September, The Wall Street Journal published a series of stories about her conduct. The White House line, as AP reported it, was that she faced allegations of improper and possibly illegal behaviour both before and during her time in Athens.
The claims are specific. According to CNN’s account, she is accused of asking for money in exchange for access to administration figures before the Senate confirmed her. She is also accused of accepting lavish gifts as ambassador and of bringing a lobbyist for a Greek construction company into official meetings. Al Jazeera described one allegation as an offer to a political donor: access to senior officials in return for money. Fox News reported that the allegations include a request for a $100,000 payment, as well as diplomatic misconduct and complaints of a hostile workplace at the US Embassy in Greece. The British tabloid the Daily Mail said she had alienated embassy staff and pushed past the limits of how a country’s top envoy should behave.
Her lawyers deny the claims that she sought money. They called reports about her travel misleading and said she followed federal rules on gifts and reporting.
The story most often told about the people who serve power is that they fall for doing wrong. More often they fall when what they did becomes embarrassing to the ruler. That is a reflection, not a finding. Nothing in the record yet shows which of the two happened in Athens.
Three days in October
The end came quickly. On Sunday, AP quoted a senior US official as saying that Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio were “extremely pissed off” about the reports of her conduct and would probably decide her future that week. On Monday, reporters at the White House asked the president whether he was thinking of firing her.
“Well, we’re looking at it. We’re not happy.”
On Tuesday the White House asked her to resign. The Australian Financial Review’s overnight blog, compiled by Natasha Rudra, ran the news alongside a pope’s lung surgery and a cricket test in Durban, using AP’s report that the White House had previewed the move to the agency over the weekend. Early versions of that report said it was not yet clear whether she had actually stepped down.
Later that day she did. Axios reported that Guilfoyle announced her resignation on social media soon after the request. She did not mention the allegations in her post. She wrote about loyalty.
“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 it to the man who had just asked her to leave.