Kimberly Guilfoyle Is a Master of Mafia Diplomacy
Por Jeet Heer — The Nation » Article
The US Ambassador to Greece is making suspicious deals for her buddies.
Kimberly Guilfoyle speaks during the 2020 Republican National Convention.
Kimberly Guilfoyle has too long been treated merely as a shadow of the men in her life—but she’s actually a formidable villain in her own right. From 2001 to 2007, she was married to Gavin Newsom, then mayor of San Francisco. From 2018 to 2024, she was affianced to Donald Trump Jr., which when he started being photographed in the company of another woman, the Palm Beach jet-setter Bettina Anderson, whom he married this year.
Guilfoyle received a remarkable consolation prize from the breakup: Trump appointed her to the role of US ambassador to Greece, which she has leveraged into being a large-scale impresario of diplomatic corruption. The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump, who retains a warm regard for Guilfoyle and who didn’t attend his son’s wedding to Anderson, said he nominated her for the ambassadorship because “I had to get her out of here.”
Despite the fact that she never married Trump Jr., Guilfoyle still enjoys an auxiliary status to the Trump family. In his 1982 study The Kennedy Imprisonment, the historian Gary Wills created the useful category of “honorary Kennedy” to describe all the fixers, cronies, and media assets who acted as agents of the Kennedy family: figures such as Ben Bradlee, Ted Sorensen, and Arthur Schlesinger Jr. It’s safe to call Guilfoyle an honorary Trump.
Out on her own now, Guilfoyle is very much “made” in the Trump mafia, and in that capacity she has flourished. Her role in shaping US foreign policy is larger than the title of ambassador to Greece would indicate.
Earlier this year, Trump purged the State Department, which has left more than a hundred ambassadorships unfilled. He has also given prominent diplomatic posts to family members such as Jared Kushner (who is acting as a diplomat without portfolio in both Europe and the Middle East) and his father, Charles Kushner (who is ambassador to France). Both Jared Kushner and the real estate mogul Steve Witkoff (another honorary Trump) seem to have leveraged their diplomatic posts into money-making operations, making lucrative deals while conducting public business. In this environment, governments throughout the Balkans and Europe know that if they want to win the favor of the Trump administration, they need to get in the good graces of Guilfoyle.
Showing her skills as an honorary Trump, Guilfoyle has leveraged her ambassadorship in fishy ways. As The Wall Street Journal explained in a major report, Guilfoyle has a murky and suspicious relationship with the Aktor Group, a Greek construction firm and its lobbyist, the Greek American Christos Marafatsos.
Guilfoyle, per The Wall Street Journal,
has puzzled government officials across the region with her persistent promotion of a specific Greek company—and her extensive efforts to involve Marafatsos, a neophyte in both diplomacy and energy.
His prior experience includes co-founding a Washington, D.C.-area produce distributor and working in businesses ranging from real-estate consulting to creating “the ultimate immersive experience” of the Acropolis in IMAX 3-D.
These days, the Maryland-raised Marafatsos is frequently seen at Guilfoyle’s side, acting as her unofficial gatekeeper and joining her for meetings at her ambassadorial residence and with government officials in countries around the region—a highly unusual move for a private citizen.
Aktor has paid Marafatsos $160,000 to bring their company to the attention of Trump and other high officials. He has three other clients, bringing his income for nine months of work to $440,000. This has been money well spent. Aktor in particular has benefited from assiduous advocacy of Guilfoyle. Continued, from The Wall Street Journal:
In November, Aktor announced a joint venture, Atlantic-SEE LNG, that would be split 60-40 between it and DEPA, a Greek state-backed energy company. In the months since, Aktor and its joint venture have signed memorandums of understanding and commercial agreements with gas companies in Bulgaria, Ukraine, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Romania. A $6 billion deal Guilfoyle helped Aktor secure in Albania would, if completed, have the country buy gas from the company through 2050.
It goes without saying that it is highly irregular for a US ambassador to work so vigorously on behalf of a foreign company or to be seen as working in lockstep with a lobbyist for that company. Guilfoyle and the White House have vigorously contested the Journal’s reporting and deny any impropriety.
Governments in the Balkan and Eastern Europe have been eager to do Guilfoyle’s bidding, since she is seen as close to Donald Trump. But in true mobster fashion, she operates not just from the promise of benefits for obedience but also fear. In a conversation with Greek Energy Minister Stavros Papastavrou, Guilfoyle reportedly referenced the downfall of a government in Romania, saying, “We can do that to any country we want. We can do that here.”
This threat of interfering in Greece’s internal politics is very Trumpian, calling to mind the efforts of Elon Musk and JD Vance to undermine European governments that attempt to regulate social media and resist the rise of the far right. There’s also the precedent of Trump’s government interfering in elections across Latin America to bolster right-wing parties.
This mafia foreign policy—combining the enrichment of allies with the subversion of governments that don’t toe the line—is one of the most dire consequences of Trump’s presidency. It should also be a major area of investigation if the Democrats take control of Congress. Even as an honorary Trump, Guilfoyle seems to be guilty of major malfeasance and should be brought to account.
Between the reemergence of right-wing red-baiting and Donald Trump’s use of the chilling National Security Presidential Memorandum–7 to criminalize left political organizing, we’re seeing McCarthyism reborn before our eyes.
This assault on democracy cannot be ignored or wished away. Resisting it requires bravery in the face of threats and repression, a steadfast commitment to the truth, and the unwavering belief that we can—and will—overcome this darkness.
We must have an independent media that sets the record straight, unearths corruption and abuses of power, and advances a politics of justice and dignity for all if we’re to win this fight.
That’s why I’m writing to you today. This September, The Nation needs to add 100 monthly donors to sustain our progressive journalism. Your contribution makes the next investigative report, the next truth-speaking column, and the next pathbreaking essay all possible.
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Onward,
Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editor and Publisher, The Nation
Jeet Heer is a national affairs correspondent for The Nation and host of the weekly Nation podcast, The Time of Monsters. He also pens the monthly column “Morbid Symptoms.” The author of In Love with Art: Francoise Mouly’s Adventures in Comics with Art Spiegelman (2013) and Sweet Lechery: Reviews, Essays and Profiles (2014), Heer has written for numerous publications, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The American Prospect, The Guardian, The New Republic, and The Boston Globe.
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