Kimberly Guilfoyle asked a Trump donor to wire $100,000 to her American Express account so it “won’t show up anywhere,” messages show, money he never sent.
Days before her Senate confirmation hearing for the ambassadorship to Greece, Kimberly Guilfoyle pressed former Kentucky congressional candidate Eric Deters for a six-figure payment routed through her American Express account, according to Signal messages reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
The July 3, 2025 exchange laid out a clear preference for a transfer that would leave little paper trail. Deters did not send the money. The Senate confirmed her anyway on Sept. 18, 2025, and she took up the Athens post in November.
The Daily Caller reported the Journal’s account of the encrypted messages, the follow-up bill-payment PDF, and the months of back-and-forth that preceded the request.
In the messages, Guilfoyle did not bury the method.
"It won’t show up anywhere if you wire money to American Express"
She followed with a bill-payment PDF and repeated pleas for same-day action.
"Honey please I need you to get this done for me today."
She also told Deters to keep money talk off the record and stick to Signal. Another line captured in the Journal’s review pushed him to stop putting things in writing:
"Eric, I really wish you would stop papering all these things"
Deters refused. He told her sending the cash would end his marriage. No $100,000 moved.
The July request did not appear out of thin air. For months before the confirmation hearing set for July 9, the two traded messages about a different bargain.
Deters had offered as much as $1 million if Guilfoyle could win him attention inside the administration on personal tax and legal problems. She agreed to press officials at the Justice Department and the IRS on his behalf and worked to book him an interview with Tucker Carlson.
Carlson told the Journal he had never heard of Deters and rejected the price tag tied to a podcast appearance.
"A million dollars for a podcast appearance? Isn’t she the ambassador to Greece? This is completely nuts,"
Guilfoyle’s attorney, Jesse Binnall, challenged the authenticity of the messages but offered no specifics. He said she was owed money for speaking at events before her nomination. Deters countered that he owed her nothing.
The messages surfaced long after the vote. Democratic lawmakers pressed Secretary of State Marco Rubio to examine Guilfoyle’s separate promotion of Greek firm Aktor Group and her travel with its lobbyist.
Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York went further on the donor episode, calling her “unfit to represent the United States abroad” if the accounts hold up.
No charges, formal ethics findings, or completed State Department sanctions are described in the reporting. The confirmation stood. Guilfoyle remains the U.S. ambassador in Athens.
The verified core is narrow and serious enough on its own. Encrypted messages attributed to Guilfoyle asked a political ally for $100,000 routed to American Express with an explicit line about it not showing up. A PDF followed. The donor said no. Her lawyer disputes the texts and frames the sum as unpaid speaking fees. Carlson dismissed the million-dollar interview pitch as absurd. Democrats folded the episode into a broader push over the Aktor relationship.
Full transcripts are not laid out beyond the lines the Journal reviewed. The exact contents of the bill-payment PDF are not detailed. Whether any other money changed hands between the two is not established. The outcome of any Rubio review of the Greek firm contacts is not reported.
Public office is not a private tab. When an ambassador-in-waiting talks about wires that “won’t show up anywhere,” voters get to see the texts and judge the standard for themselves.
