Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that he was nominating Kimberly Guilfoyle as U.S. ambassador to Greece.
Once a California prosecutor, and later a Fox News television host, Guilfoyle has worked on previous Trump election campaigns and been a close associate of the president-elect for years. She has been engaged to Trump’s eldest son, Donald Jr., since 2020. She has often talked up Trump as the best choice for female voters.
This all makes Guilfoyle an expected choice for a Trump appointment, though she has no foreign policy experience.
But Guilfoyle’s comportment and workplace behavior have faced repeated scrutiny. Both at Fox News and on the Trump campaign, Guilfoyle was accused of engaging in behaviors that range from sexually inappropriate to workplace sexual harassment. Guilfoyle was forced out of her position at Fox News due to allegations of sexual misconduct.
“For many years, Kimberly has been a close friend and ally,” wrote Trump in his announcement of the nomination. “Her extensive experience and leadership in law, media, and politics, along with her sharp intellect, make her supremely qualified to represent the United States and safeguard its interests abroad.”
The Path of Kimberly Guilfoyle
Guilfoyle grew up in a working-class family in San Francisco. She started her career as a prosecutor at district attorney’s offices in Los Angeles and then San Francisco. (In that position she in fact worked with Kamala Harris.) In 2001 she married Gavin Newsom. She left the District Attorney’s office to help him campaign for mayor of San Francisco, and he was elected on the Democratic ticket in 2004. The two divorced a year later.
Guilfoyle then shifted to a television career, starting first as a legal analyst at CNN and ABC, before ending up at Fox News in 2006. In that time she became acquainted with the Trump family.
In 2011, Guilfoyle was named one of the anchors of a politics-focused talk show on Fox. On air she spoke passionately about support for women speaking out in the #metoo movement, but she also allegedly supported Fox chairman Roger Ailes through the many accusations of sexual harassment that led to him being ousted from the network in 2016.
In 2017 Guilfoyle announced she had decided to leave Fox News. Reports in the Huffington Post quickly cast aspersions on how voluntary her departure was. In 2020 a New Yorker investigation showed that Guilfoyle was actually forced out of that position due to allegations of repeated sexual harassment.
An assistant to Guilfoyle at Fox News had accused her of repeated sexual harassment that included showing explicit photographs, discussing her sex life in graphic detail, revealing herself frequently, demanding the two sleep in the same room on work trips, demanding comments on her naked body, and pressuring the assistant to accept the sexual advances of higher ups in the office. The assistant further alleged that Guilfoyle tried to cover up this behavior during an investigation into workplace sexual misconduct with a combination of threats and bribes.
The New Yorker reported that insiders said that Fox News had agreed to pay the assistant over four million dollars to keep quiet and not pursue legal action.
At the time Guilfoyle stated “In my 30-year career working for the SF District Attorney’s Office, the LA District Attorney’s Office, in media and in politics, I have never engaged in any workplace misconduct of any kind. During my career, I have served as a mentor to countless women, with many of whom I remain exceptionally close to this day.”
Guilfoyle and the Trumps
After her time at Fox News ended, Guilfoyle became deeply involved with the Trump campaign. She was invited to events such as the conservative Young Women’s Leadership Summit to speak about what Trump offered women voters. She began dating Donald Trump Jr., and posting photos of the two of them on her social media. The two toured together to give campaign speeches for Trump senior.
In 2020 Guilfoyle took on a fundraising position in the Trump campaign. Politico reported that Guilfoyle’s management of the 2020 campaign finance team “underperformed and was an HR nightmare.” They reported that Guilfoyle frequently and explicitly discussed her sex life and offered a lap dance and a “hot tub party” to the highest donor at different events.
Guilfoyle gave a rafter-shaking speech at the 2020 Republican National Convention, with an enthusiasm that sometimes reached to shouting that “President Trump is the law and order president!” and that the Democrats “want to destroy this country, and everything that we have fought for and hold dear. They want to steal your Liberty, your Freedom. They want to control what you see and think, and believe, so they can control how you live.”
Guilfoyle has been engaged to Trump’s eldest son, Donald Jr. since 2020 though rumors have swirled in the last weeks that the engagement may have been surreptitiously called off.
Guilfoyle stayed in the Trump fold in the years following his leaving office. After January 6, 2021 a ProPublica investigation found text messages with Guilfoyle stating she had raised $3 million for the “Save America” rally that led to the riot at the US Capitol.
In October of that year, Guilfoyle took on leadership of fundraising for Trump’s super PAC, called Make America Great Again, Again!
At this year’s Republican National Convention, Guilfoyle again took the podium, starting by stating that “This is a choice between safety or chaos, wealth or poverty, national sovereignty or open borders. This election is a choice between Joe Biden’s vision for American weakness and Donald Trump’s vision of American greatness.”
She has spent the past few weeks on X lauding Trump’s cabinet appointments and promoting her talk show on the streaming platform Rumble.
On Tuesday night Guilfoyle welcomed her nomination as ambassador to Greece on social media platform X, with a photo of her waving in front of a State of Florida flag. “It was the democratic values born in Greece that helped shape the founding of America. And now, we have an opportunity to honor that history by bringing better days here at home and abroad,” she wrote. Guilfoyle made no comment on her relationship with Greece or if she has ever visited the country.
She concluded: “As ambassador, I look forward to delivering on the Trump agenda, supporting our Greek allies, and ushering in a new era of peace and prosperity.”
