Before Greece post, Guilfoyle sought $100k from MAGA donor Eric Deters while lobbying IRS chief on his behalf

Related: Part 1, Trump's ambassador to Greece told Greek officials the US could topple allied governments if it wants; Part 2, US ambassador to Greece dined with politicians who joined the far right to topple Romania's government; Part 3, A private jet flew a Romanian judge, a senator and state company chiefs to Mykonos to meet unnamed US investors

Kimberly Guilfoyle, now the US ambassador to Greece, asked the Trump donor Eric Deters on 3 July 2025 to wire $100,000 to her American Express account, six days before her confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, according to Signal and text messages reviewed by the Wall Street Journal and published on 7 October 2026. "It won't show up anywhere if you wire money to American Express," she wrote. "Please." In another message she wrote: "Honey please I need you to get this done for me today," and attached a PDF with the card company's payment instructions.

Deters refused. "Your needing $100,000 urgent unfortunately is not going to work," he wrote. "I can't do this without getting a divorce." Guilfoyle replied: "I've been calling you for over a week straight. You could be here meeting with Billy Long."

Jesse Binnall, Guilfoyle's lawyer, said the ambassador disputed the authenticity of the messages but did not give specifics. He said she had been paid to speak at events before her nomination and "was owed a balance for traveling to and supporting these patriotic events". Deters said he owed her nothing.

The donor

Eric Deters, 63, is a former Kentucky lawyer, radio host and co-owner of the Snappy Tomato Pizza chain who made unsuccessful bids for Congress and for governor. He said he paid Guilfoyle $300,000 over several years to speak at Freedom Fest, an event he launched in Kentucky in 2020 against Covid-19 mandates, and paid $200,000 to Donald Trump Jr. and $100,000 to Eric Trump. Federal Election Commission records show he gave $125,000 to a political action committee supporting Trump in 2022.

The Kentucky Bar Association suspended Deters twice, and the Kentucky Supreme Court refused to reinstate him in 2021. "Deters' practice of law is not governed by constitution, rule of law or procedure. It is anarchy," the chief justice wrote. Deters said he has retired from law: "I am a legal outlaw."

What Deters wanted

After Trump won the 2024 election, Deters asked Guilfoyle for help with the Justice Department and the Internal Revenue Service. He wanted the department to seek the extradition from Pakistan of Abubakar Atiq Durrani, an Ohio spine surgeon indicted in 2013 for health care fraud over unnecessary operations, including on children, who fled the country and remains a federal fugitive. Deters advises lawyers for hundreds of Durrani's former patients. He also wanted the department to investigate MedPro Group, Durrani's malpractice insurer, which sued Deters in federal court in Ohio in August 2025, accusing him of "a calculated scheme to extract payments" through "threats of violence and murder and by blackmail against the company's CEO". Deters said it was "the most ridiculous BS lawsuit of all time".

Deters also wanted to discuss an IRS challenge to a 2020 tax deduction with Billy Long, Trump's nominee for IRS commissioner, and said he would pay Guilfoyle $1 million if she got him on Tucker Carlson's show. "We should hear something by the end of the week," Guilfoyle wrote in December 2024. Carlson said he had never heard of Deters: "A million dollars for a podcast appearance? Isn't she the ambassador to Greece? This is completely nuts."

Binnall said: "Ambassador Guilfoyle will never apologize for offering to help shed light on a case in which 1,000 children underwent unnecessary, invasive, and debilitating surgeries at that man's hands."

The access she offered

Trump named Guilfoyle ambassador to Greece in December 2024, and her messages with Deters grew more frequent in the following months. "Every secretary of you know defense, transportation, treasury commerce IRS commissioner everyone gets right back to me," she wrote, before adding the FBI director: "Oh yeah, l'm forgetting cash Patel." An FBI spokesman said she did not lobby Patel.

Long was confirmed as IRS commissioner on 12 June 2025. Guilfoyle sent him a congratulatory note that month with a letter from Deters about his tax dispute attached. "Don Jr. and I are very close with Eric Deters and his wife and I know he sent you a letter," she wrote. Two days later Deters sent her a memo: "I have paid you $300,000 over the years. As of this memo, I have not received one favor. I am not naive or a sucker. I need results." Guilfoyle told him to "stop papering all these things. It's really dangerous." She wrote: "Just call me on signal." Later that day she wrote that Long had replied to her: "BOOM."

Long was removed as IRS commissioner in August 2025 and confirmed as ambassador to Iceland in May 2026.

The paper trail

Guilfoyle repeatedly told Deters not to put money in writing. In January 2025, weeks after her nomination, she objected that he had copied a producer on her podcast about their arrangement. "It's unbelievable when we have a private arrangement with you that you would now CC a producer talking about money," she wrote. "Do not say we have any arrangement." She wrote: "What a nightmare you'll literally cost me my ambassadorship stop writing."

Deters said Guilfoyle asked him in spring 2025 to draft a letter acknowledging two $50,000 consulting payments: "She was worried about legality, and she was worried about the appearances of it." A letter dated 11 June 2025 from his consulting company says it owed her $50,000 "before your new position" and wanted to engage her until her confirmation.

Guilfoyle told friends before her confirmation that she was short of money, according to people familiar with the matter. Her February 2025 financial disclosure listed a boat loan of $100,000 to $250,000, a mortgage of $1 million to $5 million, nearly $800,000 in podcast income and a medspa and a new vodka company each valued at $1 million to $5 million. She could not sell the Florida house she bought with Trump Jr. for $9.7 million at its $30 million asking price; Trump Jr. bought her share for $7.6 million in 2026. "I have a lot shit to get done before then and I need to make money," she wrote to Deters in March 2025 when he asked when she would move to Greece.

A US embassy official said Guilfoyle "was fully vetted by the bipartisan Senate Foreign Relations committee and confirmed by the U.S. Senate" and "remains committed to representing the American people with dedication and integrity".

Money for access

Deters said he paid Guilfoyle $300,000 in speaking fees from 2020 onwards and promised her up to $1 million if she got results for him. After her nomination in December 2024 Guilfoyle told him that cabinet secretaries, the IRS commissioner and the FBI director "get right back to me". In June 2025 she sent Billy Long, the newly confirmed IRS commissioner, Deters' letter about his tax dispute and asked him to "give some time and attention to it". Deters then sent her a memo saying he had paid her $300,000 and "I need results". On 3 July she asked him to wire $100,000 to her American Express account, writing that "it won't show up anywhere", and told him: "You could be here meeting with Billy Long." Throughout, she asked him not to put payments in writing and said their "private arrangement" could cost her the ambassadorship.

Federal bribery law applies to nominees as well as serving officials. Under 18 U.S.C. § 201, a "person who has been selected to be a public official" includes anyone nominated to a federal post, and it is a crime for such a person to corruptly seek "anything of value" in return for being influenced in the performance of an official act. The Supreme Court narrowed the meaning of "official act" in McDonnell v. United States in 2016, ruling that arranging meetings, contacting other officials or hosting events does not by itself qualify. Guilfoyle's own powers as a nominee and later as ambassador did not cover the IRS or the Justice Department, and the messages show her seeking attention for Deters' case rather than a specific decision.

Deters did not make the $100,000 payment. Her lawyer disputes that the messages are authentic and said the money she sought was a balance owed for speaking at events before her nomination. Deters said he owed her nothing.

Deters responds

Deters said in a video posted on Facebook after the story's publication that he had spoken to reporters over 48 hours about Guilfoyle and his "great disappointment in the Trump administration" for failing to help Durrani's former patients. He said he had sent letters to Vice-President JD Vance, the former attorney general Pam Bondi and the Justice Department's Todd Blanche, and that "nobody in the Trump administration lifts a finger". He said he wanted two things: Durrani's extradition under the treaty with Pakistan, and a Justice Department and FBI investigation into how Durrani fled and into what he called fraud by Medical Protective, the MedPro Group company that insured Durrani.

Deters said Durrani had performed unnecessary spine surgeries on more than 580 people, 185 of them children, between 2005 and 2013, that more than 105 had since died and that hundreds were still waiting for trial. He said Guilfoyle had defamed him by having her lawyers say the messages were not real: "They are." He also said she had called him a known blackmailer. "I've never blackmailed anybody in my freaking life, ever," he said. He said MedPro's allegation that he threatened murder was "insane".

Rubio in Athens

Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, held a press conference in Athens on the morning of 7 October, hours before the Deters messages were published, with Guilfoyle seated in front of the podium. Asked whether he had reviewed allegations about her from the earlier reporting, he said: "This is not the forum where we're going to address this. Suffice it to say, our embassy here is doing a great job, our ambassador has been a strong ambassador here." Asked about her reported remark that the United States could bring down governments, he said: "So the premise to your question is not true," according to an English rendering of his reply.

Rubio said the Vertical Gas Corridor, which carries US liquefied natural gas from Greece north towards Ukraine, had made Greece a secure energy hub. On 3 October the embassy had posted a statement from Rubio saying Guilfoyle had "successfully advanced US energy interests in Greece and Southeastern Europe" through the corridor. He met Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Foreign Minister Giorgos Gerapetritis and Defence Minister Nikos Dendias, and the two governments signed a counter-terrorism information-sharing memorandum and a letter of intent on National Guard cooperation.

Dora Bakoyannis, a New Democracy MP and former foreign minister, told a parliamentary committee on 7 October: "No power, in any place or from any part of the world, can choose governments." Stavros Papastavrou, the energy minister, told parliament on 2 October that there "was never any question of pressure on or a threat to our country".

Europe

The Deters messages concern Guilfoyle's dealings in the United States before she took up her post. They add to scrutiny that began with an investigation into her promotion of Aktor, the Greek construction group that owns 60 per cent of Atlantic-SEE LNG Trade, a venture selling US gas in south-east Europe. Christos Marafatsos, a registered lobbyist paid by Aktor, accompanied her to meetings with officials in Bulgaria and Albania. Alexandros Exarchou, Aktor's chief executive, flew her to Sofia on a private jet. Albania signed a $6 billion, 20-year agreement in April to buy gas through an Aktor subsidiary.

Guilfoyle sought a $3 million investment in her vodka company, Polished Rice, from a Greek businessman in the diaspora around the time of her confirmation, according to a person familiar with the matter. Binnall denied it and said she has pursued no private business since entering public service.

Guilfoyle told Greek and US officials at a dinner in Athens in March, while discussing the impending collapse of Romania's government, "We can do that to any country we want. We can do that here," according to an attendee. Binnall disputed the account. A second, separate source later confirmed the remark and dated the dinner to 18 March.

On 31 March Guilfoyle dined at the Isoletta restaurant in Bucharest with Sorin Grindeanu, leader of Romania's Social Democratic Party (PSD), the then energy minister Bogdan Ivan and Florin Vlădică, an adviser to President Nicușor Dan. Marafatsos was there too; his lawyer said he stayed "a maximum of 15 minutes" and "wasn't part of any conversation about the Romanian government". Grindeanu said they discussed Romania's transit role in the gas corridor. Footage of the dinner was published in Romania on 24 April, the day before the PSD left the coalition of Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan. Some of those reports named Gheorghe Adrian Rafael, a former adviser to the ex-interior minister Marcel Vela, among the guests. A Bucharest appeal court gave Rafael a final three-year prison sentence for influence peddling in October 2021; he was arrested in Italy the following month, and Italian courts later declined to surrender him, according to reports at the time. President Dan said in May that Vlădică told him he did not know Rafael's legal status. "As long as nothing illegal happens, I think there is nothing abnormal," Dan said.

Ivan had asked Dan and Bolojan in January 2026 for a state agreement to buy US gas through Nova Power & Gas, Atlantic-SEE's Romanian partner. The state producer Romgaz had already rejected a 20-year Atlantic-SEE contract on price, and Bolojan's government withheld the mandate. The PSD and the far-right AUR filed a no-confidence motion on 28 April and brought the government down on 5 May. Romania's foreign minister, Oana Țoiu, said on 28 September that Guilfoyle's Bucharest visit was a private business event "outside any mandate of representation, negotiation or relation with Romanian state institutions".

Romania has had a caretaker government since May. Dan nominated Luca Niculescu, a secretary of state at the foreign ministry, as prime minister on 5 October, the fourth nomination since Bolojan's fall. A Senate committee examining a separate July private flight to Mykonos, organised by the Romanian Chamber of Commerce to meet unnamed US investors, voted on 6 October to seek 30 more days after the Chamber's president, Mihai Daraban, and the Constitutional Court judge Cristian Deliorga failed for a second time to appear.

Gregory Meeks, the senior Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, wrote to Rubio on 1 October asking for a list of the meetings Marafatsos attended, records of Guilfoyle's private flights and her financial disclosures. Meeks wrote that if the reports were accurate, Guilfoyle "is unfit to represent the United States abroad and should be removed". Shaheen asked whether Guilfoyle had accepted flights or hospitality from Aktor.