Ambassador Kimberly Guilfoyle: reported request that a donor pay her $100,000 American Express bill, and promotion of Aktor Group (Sept.-Oct. 2026)

Case

Kimberly Guilfoyle, now U.S. ambassador to Greece, asked Trump donor Eric Deters in July 2025, days before her confirmation hearing, to wire $100,000 to her American Express account without leaving a paper trail, according to a Wall Street Journal report of Oct. 7, 2026. Deters, who wanted help with tax and legal matters and had promised her up to $1 million, did not pay. Her lawyer disputes the authenticity of the messages.

The reported American Express request (WSJ, Oct. 7, 2026)
On July 3, 2025, days before her July 9 confirmation hearing, she sent Deters a PDF of American Express payment instructions on Signal and wrote that a wire to American Express "won't show up anywhere." The Journal, which reviewed hundreds of messages, emails and letters, published screenshots of the messages.
According to the Journal, she pressed him to do it that same day and added a prayer-hands emoji.
Deters did not make the payment, telling her it would cost him his marriage. He says she told him that if he paid, she would be his loyal Trump ally forever, but that she never delivered on anything.

What Deters wanted and offered
Deters, a former Kentucky congressional candidate, was seeking help getting the new Trump administration's attention on personal tax and legal issues, and had promised payments of as much as $1 million if she succeeded. As Donald Trump Jr.'s former fiancée, Guilfoyle offered to use her influence.
His requests included asking the Justice Department to seek the extradition of Abubakar Atiq Durrani, an Ohio doctor who fled to Pakistan after being charged with defrauding insurers through unnecessary spinal surgeries, and to investigate Durrani's malpractice insurer MedPro Group. He also wanted to speak with incoming IRS Commissioner Billy Long about a probe into a 2020 deduction tied to the sale of his interest in the family business.
Guilfoyle forwarded Deters messages she had sent to the new IRS chief and updated him on her efforts to lobby the Justice Department for him. She also promised to lobby officials including FBI Director Kash Patel and then-Attorney General Pam Bondi. An FBI spokesman told the Journal she did not lobby Patel; other agencies did not respond.
Deters offered her $1 million if she helped him get on Tucker Carlson's show, and she contacted people in Carlson's orbit. It went nowhere. Carlson told the Journal he had never heard of Deters and called the idea completely nuts.

Earlier payments and donations
Deters says his dealings with Guilfoyle began in 2020 with his Freedom Fest event in Kentucky. He says he paid her $300,000 over the following years to speak there, along with $200,000 to Trump Jr. and $100,000 to Eric Trump.
Federal Election Commission records show Deters gave $125,000 in 2022 to a political action committee supporting Trump.

Warnings not to put money talk in writing
Guilfoyle repeatedly warned Deters not to put talk of money or payments in writing, expressing concern that her dealings with him becoming public could affect her ambassador post. In one message she told him to stop papering such matters, calling it dangerous and unhelpful to both of them, and to call her on Signal instead.
In January 2025, weeks after her nomination, she complained that Deters had told a producer on her podcast about their arrangement.

Context on Deters
Deters, 63, is a lawyer and former co-owner of Snappy Tomato Pizza who lost races for Congress and governor. The Journal reports the Kentucky Bar Association twice suspended him, the Kentucky Supreme Court declined to reinstate him in 2021, and he was banned from a Hamilton County, Ohio courthouse in 2020 after threatening on social media to burn it down.
MedPro Group has sued Deters, accusing him of a scheme to extract payments from the insurer, including through threats and blackmail. Deters denies the accusations.

Earlier WSJ investigation: Aktor Group and the lobbyist (Sept.-Oct. 2026)
A Wall Street Journal investigation reported that Guilfoyle persistently promoted Greek company Aktor Group across southeastern Europe, and that Aktor lobbyist Christos Marafatsos attended meetings with foreign officials alongside her.
Aktor, through a joint venture with a Greek state-backed energy company, signed a 20-year agreement last fall to buy American liquefied natural gas from Venture Global.
On Oct. 1, 2026 the top Democrats on the Senate and House foreign affairs committees pressed Secretary of State Marco Rubio to review her conduct and asked for records of every meeting Marafatsos attended. Guilfoyle faces calls for her removal.

Guilfoyle's finances before her confirmation
After Trump's 2020 defeat, Guilfoyle tried to turn her MAGA profile into a business, with ventures including hair care and fragrance lines, a medspa, a political consulting firm and public relations work. In 2022 she launched an upscale vodka and champagne brand, American Dream.
In March 2024 American Dream sought to raise $2 million from investors, according to a pitch deck the Journal viewed, projecting $75 million in revenue within three years. She later dissolved the company. Her lawyer previously told the Journal the claim that an American Dream dinner at Mar-a-Lago was an investment pitch was false.
People familiar with the matter told the Journal Trump grew frustrated that she was soliciting investments from Mar-a-Lago members for her own companies instead of raising money for him.
People familiar with the matter said she complained to friends that she was broke as her confirmation hearing approached in 2025. Her engagement to Donald Trump Jr. had ended the previous year.
Her February 2025 financial disclosure listed a boat loan of $100,000 to $250,000 and a mortgage of $1 million to $5 million, a medspa and a new vodka company each worth $1 million to $5 million, and nearly $800,000 in podcast income.
She wanted to sell the Florida mansion she and Trump Jr. bought for $9.7 million but found no buyer at a $30 million listing price. Trump Jr. bought her out of the house for $7.6 million this year.
In March 2025, when Deters asked when she would move to Greece, she told him to stop asking and wrote that she had a lot to get done first and needed to make money.

The June 2025 payment letter and the IRS commissioner
Later that spring she began asking Deters for additional payments. Deters told the Journal she asked him to draft a letter saying he owed her two $50,000 back payments for consulting services, and that she was worried about the legality and appearances of it.
In a June 11, 2025 letter the Journal reviewed, Deters wrote on behalf of his consulting company that he believed they owed her $50,000 before her new position and proposed paying $50,000 on July 1 and $50,000 on August 1, engaging her until her confirmation for insight and guidance on issues she was uniquely qualified to help with.
That month, after Billy Long was confirmed as IRS commissioner, Guilfoyle sent him a congratulatory note attaching a letter Deters had written about his tax dispute. She told Long that she and Trump Jr. were very close with Deters and his wife and hoped Long could give the matter time and attention.
Two days later Deters sent her a photo of a printed memo saying he had paid her $300,000 over the years, had not received one favor, and needed results. She replied that he should stop papering such matters, calling it dangerous, and call her on Signal.
She promised to call Long the next day, said she had written him a very nice message stressing how close Deters was to her and Trump Jr., and privately told Deters not to put anything about it in an email or text. That afternoon she texted that Long had written back.
A week later, on July 3, she placed two missed calls to Deters and sent him wire instructions for an American Express account. Deters replied that needing $100,000 urgently was not going to work and that he could not do it without getting a divorce. She answered that she had been calling for over a week and that he could be meeting with Long.
Long is now U.S. ambassador to Iceland. Embassy officials there referred reporters to a State Department media office, which did not respond to a request for comment.

Perspectives

Official position — Guilfoyle's lawyer (Jesse Binnall), a U.S. Embassy official, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio
Guilfoyle's lawyer, Jesse Binnall, told the Journal she disputes the authenticity of the messages but declined to 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 them; Deters says he owed her nothing. On the Durrani case, Binnall said she will never apologize for offering to help shed light on a case involving 1,000 children who underwent unnecessary surgeries. A U.S. Embassy official said she was fully vetted by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, confirmed by the Senate, and remains committed to serving with dedication and integrity. At a press conference in Athens on Oct. 7 Secretary of State Rubio praised her work and the embassy. On the separate Aktor reporting, an embassy official said any suggestion she operated outside ethics guidelines is categorically false.

Research notes
Open leads: (1) Checked against the full text of the Journal's Oct. 7 report (byline Dana Mattioli, Drew Hinshaw, Joe Parkinson, Rebecca Ballhaus), a syndicated copy supplied by the site author. The earlier Aktor investigation has not been read; that section rests on a Raw Story summary and needs a syndicated copy. (2) Items attributed to unnamed "people familiar with the matter" (Trump's frustration over her soliciting investors, her telling friends she was broke) are single-source and not independently confirmed. (3) Check for a State Department response to the Shaheen and Meeks letters, any ethics or inspector general review, and any response from the IRS, Justice Department or the State Department media office about Billy Long, now ambassador to Iceland. (4) Linked to two other GREED entries, "Contracts and payments to Trump allies" and the DHS/Daedalus Aviation no-bid aircraft purchase, as inferred same-context connections: no source states a link. The author's view is that this and other recent items are connected by broader corruption in the federal government rather than by a specific shared actor or mechanism.

Note
Guilfoyle's lawyer disputes the authenticity of the messages without giving specifics, and says she was owed a balance for earlier speaking appearances; Deters says he owed her nothing.

Sources
[1] The Daily Beast: Kimberly Guilfoyle's Demand for Cash Off the Books Exposed (https://www.thedailybeast.com/kimberly-guilfoyles-demand-for-cash-off-the-books-exposed) · 2026-10-07
[2] Raw Story: Kimberly Guilfoyle begged Trump donor to quietly pay off her AMEX bill (https://www.rawstory.com/kimberly-guilfoyle-2678050058/) · 2026-10-07
[3] Mediaite: U.S. Ambassador Kimberly Guilfoyle Reportedly Begged Trump Donor to Pay $100,000 Credit Card Debt (https://www.mediaite.com/media/news/honey-please-u-s-ambassador-kimberly-guilfoyle-reportedly-begged-trump-donor-to-pay-100000-credit-card-debt/) · 2026-10-07
[4] Election Law Blog: "'Honey Please': Kimberly Guilfoyle Pushed Donor to Wire $100,000 to Her Amex Account" (https://electionlawblog.org/2026/honey-please-kimberly-guilfoyle-pushed-donor-to-wire-100000-to-her-amex-account/) · 2026-10-07
[5] Raw Story: Kimberly Guilfoyle 'unfit' to serve after her overseas antics were exposed: lawmakers (https://www.rawstory.com/kimberly-guilfoyle-2677977462/) · 2026-10-01
[6] Wall Street Journal (syndicated on MSN): "'Honey Please': Kimberly Guilfoyle Pushed Donor to Wire $100,000 to Her Amex Account" (https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/honey-please-kimberly-guilfoyle-pushed-donor-to-wire-100000-to-her-amex-account/ar-AA2dLZMO) · 2026-10-07

Connections

Same context — Contracts and payments to Trump allies: documented cases and the open question of no-work retainers (2025–2026)
Both involve money and access flowing between Trump allies and administration officials, with Guilfoyle's alleged request to a donor, and her lobbying of the IRS and DOJ on his behalf, set beside the contracts and payments to allies documented in the synthesis.

Same context — DHS's $464 million no-bid aircraft purchase from donor-linked Daedalus Aviation, including five planes bought hours before Noem left (2025-2026)
Both involve Trump donors seeking or receiving benefits from the administration: Deters sought help from DOJ and the IRS, and Daedalus chairman William Walters, a donor, received a no-bid DHS aircraft contract.

Same context — Sen. Susan Collins, Navatek and an FBI pay-to-play probe that ended in the 2025 public-corruption purge (ProPublica, Sept. 2026)
Both involve a donor seeking help from officials in exchange for money, in Guilfoyle's case reported help with DOJ and IRS matters; this is an inferred connection, and Guilfoyle's lawyer disputes the authenticity of the messages.