WSJ: Guilfoyle Pushed Donor to Wire $100K to Her AmEx Account

Anderson Cooper (0:02)

Good evening from the newsroom, and honey, please, I need you to get this done for me today.

Those words, according to the Wall Street Journal, were texted by Kimberly Guilfoyle, now the American ambassador to Greece, to a donor she was requesting $100,000 from so she could pay off her American Express bill. Now, why would anyone just give Kimberly Guilfoyle a hundred grand? Well, because he wanted something in return, and according to the Journal, had offered Guilfoyle, who had been Donald Trump Jr.'s fiance, a million dollars if she could do some favors for him. The story broke yesterday, but it continued today and tonight. Ambassador Guilfoyle was on the tarmac in Athens this morning, just steps away from her boss, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who does not sound thrilled to be fielding questions about this.

Shimon Prokupecz (0:48)

Sir, do you have anything new on the reporting from the Wall Street Journal that Ambassador Guilfoyle had sought finance?

Marco Rubio (0:53)

Yeah, guys, let me tell you something, okay?

Shimon Prokupecz (0:54)

You guys are going to ask me this, you're going to ask me again in Portugal.

Brad Todd (0:57)

I know the game, okay?

Anderson Cooper (0:58)

The game is someone gives information to a newspaper or a media outlet.

SPEAKER_5 (1:02)

The media outlet reports it.

Shimon Prokupecz (1:03)

You immediately turn to me and say, I need you to respond to our reporting.

Anderson Cooper (1:07)

That's not the way this process works.

SPEAKER_6 (1:09)

So get that out of your head, because that's never the way it's going to work with me.

Anderson Cooper (1:12)

It's a game that's been played for a long time, but it's not a game we're going to play.

Could have just said he didn't want to answer the question, but that's basically what he's saying. He doesn't want to talk about it. Vice President Vance, on the other hand, did engage somewhat, not only by treating the question as a hypothetical.

SPEAKER_7 (1:28)

Do you have any reaction to a US government official, in this case a US ambassador, asking someone to pay off debt in exchange to access to other government officials?

SPEAKER_8 (1:41)

Well, so with that hypothetical, Jen, obviously, I don't love that, but I don't know who exactly you're talking about. I don't know the full details.

Anderson Cooper (1:54)

Okay, so let's get into the details, as first reported by the Wall Street Journal. The text I read and others were sent by Guilfoyle to a Kentucky MAGA donor named Eric Dieters and were written just before her Senate confirmation hearing in July of last year. And again, in one she says, referring to the AmEx bill, the honey, please, I need you to get this done for me today. A short time later, according to the journal, she talks about how to make the payment she thinks less traceable. Quote, it won't show up anywhere if you wire money to American Express. That's all it will show. Please, polite. Dieters told the journal that she promised that if he paid, she would quote, be your ride, your Trump ride or die forever and ever. He didn't pay, the relationship soured. And according to the journal, she began expressing concerns about their dealings becoming public. Quoting now, Eric, I really wish you would stop papering all these things. Also, what a nightmare. You'll literally cost me my ambassadorship. Stop writing. Stop papering all these things. It's really dangerous. And just call me on signal.

An attorney for the ambassador disputes the authenticity of the text. Dieter's meantime has been talking about them all day.

Here he is on Jake Tapper, on the lead. He told Jake he wanted Guilfoyle's help with the legal case he was pursuing, among other things, for which he'd pay her a million dollars.

Eric Dieters (3:15)

What I did is I told Kimberly, I said, Kimberly, if you help me draw attention to this, when the case settles, I'll give you a million bucks. And she said, fine.

And she said that she'd start doing all these things for me. But none of that ever happened. So right before her Senate confirmation, she says to me, I need $100,000 to pay off my American Express card, or I'm not going to become Greek ambassador. This is embarrassing. And I said, Kimberly, you haven't done anything that I've asked you to do. I mean, I mean, just nothing.

She hadn't accomplished anything. And I said, Kimberly, why should I do this for you? And she told me, it's in the text messages. I'll be your ride or die forever in the Trump Administration. I won't keep track of how many favors, how big the favors.