The texts

The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that Kimberly Guilfoyle, the U.S. ambassador to Greece and former fiancée of Donald Trump Jr., asked a Trump donor to pay off a $100,000 American Express balance shortly before her Senate confirmation hearing on July 9, 2025. The Journal reviewed a text message sent on July 3, 2025, in which she wrote: "Honey, please I need you to get this done for me today." The donor, Eric Deters, a lawyer and former Kentucky congressional candidate, was seeking help from the Trump administration with personal tax and legal problems. According to the report, he did not send the money, telling Guilfoyle it would cost him his marriage. The Journal's account draws on screenshots and on part of hundreds of messages, emails and letters it reviewed, and says the exchanges ran for months.

An offer of influence

According to Deters and the messages reviewed by the Journal, Guilfoyle also offered to use her influence as a former fiancée of Donald Trump Jr. She forwarded messages she had sent to the new head of the Internal Revenue Service and kept Deters informed of her efforts to press the Justice Department on his behalf. Deters had promised her payments of up to $1 million if she succeeded, according to the same accounts. The report says Deters has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Trump family and to Trump's 2024 presidential campaign since 2020. The request about her own card balance was, in the report's telling, more personal than the earlier exchanges.

Denials and responses

Guilfoyle's lawyer, Jesse Binnall, disputed the authenticity of the texts when speaking to the Journal. Secretary of State Marco Rubio declined on Thursday in Athens to comment, saying he would not comment on a story published only a few hours earlier. His European tour also included Iceland and Portugal.

At a press conference on Thursday about the administration's crackdown on alleged fraud in work visa programs, CBS News' Jennifer Jacobs asked Vice President JD Vance about the case. Vance said he did not know exactly whom she meant and did not know the full details. He said he did not like anybody selling access to another government official, but could not say with confidence that the case reflected the way it was described.

“Obviously, I don't love that.”

“I'd like to get the full story before offering a real opinion.”

Reaction on the right

Scott Jennings, a CNN senior political contributor who has often defended the Trump administration on air, criticized the texts on The Arena with Kasie Hunt on Thursday. He said the messages were not necessarily illegal but had to be investigated, and he assumed the State Department would take the next step.

“It's extremely unseemly, these text messages. There's no other way to read it. Again, may not be illegal. Has to be investigated.”

Democratic lawmakers on the Senate and House foreign affairs committees had already targeted Guilfoyle the previous week.

Timeline

The sequence runs from the July 2025 messages to this week's reports and reactions. The text sent on July 3, 2025 came six days before the confirmation hearing on July 9. The Journal published its report on Wednesday, 7 October 2026, and Vance and Rubio responded on Thursday, 8 October.