The Fall of Kimberly Guilfoyle

Imani Moise (0:05)

Yesterday, Kimberly Guilfoyle resigned from her post as US. Ambassador to Greece, and it was because of a Wall Street Journal investigation.

During Guilfoyle's ambassadorship, the Wall Street Journal looked into allegations that she was using her position for personal gain. After that investigation was published, the Journal received information about a series of text messages. Can you just give us a sense of how many text messages landed on your desk?

Dana Mattioli (0:37)

Probably more than a hundred.

Imani Moise (0:39)

That's our colleague, Dana Mattioli.

Dana Mattioli (0:41)

Also, we received emails, and by the end of this, my colleagues and I had gone through hundreds, hundreds, more than a year's worth of text messages between the person who sent us the text messages and the then-ambassador to Greece.

Imani Moise (0:56)

In multiple texts, Guilfoyle talks about a potential payment of $100,000 to her American Express account.

SPEAKER_3 (1:03)

Honey, please, I need you to get this done for me today with a prayer hand emoji.

Imani Moise (1:09)

What was your initial reaction to getting this tranche of text messages?

Dana Mattioli (1:13)

The text messages got sent to myself and my three other colleagues, and they were really just eye-opening. They were very graphic text messages, and the first thing we said about doing was authenticating them, right?

Imani Moise (1:28)

The texts were between Guilfoyle and a man named Eric Dieters. Ultimately, Dieters didn't make the payment, telling Guilfoyle that it would cost him his marriage.

Later, Dieters provided the messages to Dana, and Dana got to work verifying that the texts were real.

Dana Mattioli (1:44)

So what we did was myself and my colleague Rebecca Bauhaus got on a Google Meet, a video phone call with Eric Dieters. And we had him pull up his cell phone to the text messages with Kimberly Guilfoyle.

Imani Moise (1:58)

In the Meet, Dieters clicked on the contact card and showed the reporters that the phone number he had been texting was the same cell as the one they knew to be Kimberly Guilfoyle's.

Dana Mattioli (2:07)

And then he very slowly scrolled through every single text message with her for over a year. And we read them to match what was sent to us with what was actually on his phone, and to see the context in between the things that he didn't send us, of course, right? We were able to see over a year's worth of text messages to help authenticate these messages for our publication, which obviously we have very high standards before we publish anything.

Imani Moise (2:31)

Through a lawyer, Guilfoyle disputed the authenticity of the messages in the reporting, but declined to provide specifics. Through these text messages, what Dana and her colleagues were able to see was that Eric Dieters and Kimberly Guilfoyle had an arrangement where he would pay her money and Guilfoyle would promise Dieters access to some of the most powerful people in the Trump administration.

Dana Mattioli (2:53)

They were sort of both using each other in some ways. And when you read the text messages back and forth, you could see how much these two people seem to need each other.

Imani Moise (3:04)

Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business and power. I'm Imani Moise. It's Wednesday, October 14th.

Coming up on the show, The Wall Street Journal investigation that led to Kimberly Guilfoyle's resignation.

SPEAKER_4 (3:34)

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Imani Moise (4:10)

Eric Dieter said his dealings with Kimberly Guilfoyle began during the early days of COVID. Dieters had launched a MAGA event called Freedom Fest.

Dana Mattioli (4:24)

It was this festival in Kentucky in response to COVID-19 medical mandates. And in order to really get a lot of attention for this festival, Dieter sought to find someone closely aligned with the MAGA movement that could appear as a speaker.

And he found Kimberly Guilfoyle during that period and started communicating with her. And she had a big enough megaphone that she would be a good ambassador for this festival.

Imani Moise (4:52)

At the time, Guilfoyle was engaged to Donald Trump Jr. and was a rising MAGA icon herself. She was a former Fox News host, the kind of spokesperson that Dieter was looking for.