WASHINGTON — Kimberly Guilfoyle, the former fiancee of Donald Trump Jr., secretly begged a Republican donor to pay her credit card debt while she was waiting to be confirmed as ambassador to Greece, according to an interview with the donor.

The donor, Eric Deters, said that Guilfoyle had asked him to wire $100,000 to pay off her American Express card just before her Senate confirmation hearing in early July 2025, promising to serve as his “ride or die in Trump world” if he did.

“Honey please I need you to get this done for me today,” she wrote in what appeared to be a text message. Communications between Deters and Guilfoyle were reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal. Deters provided what appeared to be screenshots of their correspondence to The New York Times.

Deters sketched out a tawdry tale in which a member of the Trump family’s inner circle promised access to top administration officials as part of a financial arrangement she insisted be kept hidden. The donor wanted to connect with Pam Bondi, then attorney general, and Billy Long, then the Internal Revenue Service commissioner, for business and personal reasons.

“Every secretary you know defense, transportation, treasury commerce IRS commissioner everyone gets right back to me,” she appears to have written the donor in late June 2025, shortly before her Senate confirmation hearing.

The texts suggest that Guilfoyle warned him to call her on Signal and keep their interactions strictly private. “You’ll literally cost me my ambassadorship,” she wrote, according to one of the screenshots Deters shared with the Times.

“Eric, I really wish you would stop papering all these things,” another message said. “It’s really dangerous.”

Democrats immediately pounced on the allegations as evidence of a pay-to-play pattern during the second Trump administration. Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, said such influence-peddling “would be a brazen abuse of power.” Rep. Madeleine Dean, D-Pa., who sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said Guilfoyle should be fired.

A lawyer for Guilfoyle declined to comment. Secretary of State Marco Rubio refused to answer questions Thursday about the ambassador’s conduct as he wound up a visit to Athens.

“Just because some source told you something,” he said vehemently, does not mean “it’s gospel.”

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Sharon LaFraniere/Jamie Kelter Davis
c. 2026 The New York Times Company