Kimberly Guilfoyle: Latest Trump nominee accused of sexual misconduct
Posted on 12/12/2024
Kimberly Guilfoyle, the former San Francisco first lady-turned fierce Donald Trump loyalist, said Tuesday that she was honored to be the president-elect’s choice to become ambassador to Greece and looked forward to earning the support of the U.S. Senate.
But it remains to be seen whether Guilfoyle can win this support. She’s got “baggage,” as political observers would say, and not just because she may or may not still be engaged to Trump’s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr.
The former San Francisco prosecutor also has faced allegations that she engaged in sexual misconduct when she worked as a host at Fox News, reportedly subjecting a female assistant to “degrading, abusive, and sexually inappropriate behavior” and leaving the Rupert Murdoch-run network to pay out a multimillion-dollar settlement to avoid trial.
Guilfoyle is the latest Trump nominee for a high-level, public-facing government position to face allegations of sexual impropriety. It’s not clear yet whether such allegations will prove disqualifying for these jobs, with Trump barreling into his second term and insisting his government should be filled with loyalists. His party also controls the Senate, which is responsible for confirming nominees to positions in his Cabinet, in the federal courts and in the State Department.
But making Guilfoyle an ambassador with her alleged history “does continue the pattern that we have seen among a number of Trump nominees, one that he does not consider (sexual misconduct) a disqualifying issue in any forum,” said Kathleen Dolan, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee whose focus includes women and politics.
Trump himself has been accused of sexual misconduct or assault by at least 18 women and was found liable by a jury for sexually abusing a woman in a department store in the mid-1990s, the Washington Post said. The former reality TV star was first elected president in 2016, even after the release of the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape, where he could be heard saying he “can do anything” to women because he’s a “star.” Trump has repeatedly denied the accusations against him.
“It also a good mirror, I think, into where we still are in American society on sexual harassment,” Dolan said. “Half the country would say, ‘You can’t be the ambassador if you’ve been accused of this and your employer had to pay out millions of dollars to cover it up.’ And then, some part of the country, is, ‘Whatever, you know, boys will be boys, girls will be girls.’”
The Washington Post added that Trump’s willingness to pick people who face such accusations shows his insistence on placing loyalty above Washington norms and his tendency to play down accusations of sexual misconduct “as invented claims or the work of political enemies.”
Guilfoyle has been an enthusiastic campaigner and fundraiser for Trump, and she supported his false claims that he won the 2020 election over Joe Biden. Her nomination is a further indication that Trump wants to demonstrate “defiance” of these norms, perhaps point “a middle finger” and show “a new level of trying to own the libs,” Dolan also said.
Senate opposition did manage to end Trump’s nomination of former Florida congressman Matt Gaetz to head the Justice Department, with Gaetz still facing a House Ethics Committee investigation into alleged child sex abuse and illegal drug use.
But, for the time being, Trump appears to be standing by Pete Hegseth and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., his picks to head the Defense and Health and Human Services departments, respectively. They each have histories of being accused of sexual assault, which both have denied. Linda McMahon, Trump’s pick for education secretary and former World Wrestling Entertainment CEO, also has been accused in an October lawsuit of failing to prevent the sexual abuse of teenage WWE workers.
The allegations against Guilfoyle began to surface soon after she left her lucrative job at Fox News in July 2018. Among the reasons publicly given for her departure was that she wanted to work for a pro-Trump Super Pac as she began dating Trump Jr.
But a 2018 story by HuffPost and a 2020 investigation by the New Yorker revealed that the ex-wife of California Gov. Gavin Newsom was asked to leave Fox News following a human resources investigation into allegations of inappropriate behavior, including sexual misconduct. New Yorker writer Jane Mayer reported that the allegations involved Guilfoyle’s former assistant who filed a draft complaint. The young woman alleged that Guilfoyle frequently required her to work at Guilfoyle’s New York apartment while “The Five” host, her direct supervisor, displayed herself naked.
In her complaint, the assistant also said Guilfoyle showed her photographs of the genitalia of men with whom she had had sexual relations, Mayer reported. The complaint further alleged that Guilfoyle, a Roger Ailes protégée, “spoke incessantly and luridly about her sex life” and told the assistant she should sleep with wealthy and powerful men and submit to a Fox employee’s demands for sexual favors.
Under Ailes, Fox News became a hotbed of sexual harassment and retaliation, HuffPost reported. But the network worked to change its workplace culture after Ailes resigned in 2016, after he was accused of sexually harassing a number of female employees, including stars such as Gretchen Carlson, Megyn Kelly and Julie Roginsky.
Mayer also reported that the assistant accused Guilfoyle of trying to buy her silence, while Fox secretly paid her an undisclosed sum. Mayer said she was told that the sum was “upward of four million dollars.”
Guilfoyle denied the sexual misconduct allegations, both right after she left Fox News and, in a statement to the New Yorker in 2020, she said “In my 30-year career working for the SF District Attorney’s Office, the LA District Attorney’s Office, in media and in politics, I have never engaged in any workplace misconduct of any kind. During my career, I have served as a mentor to countless women, with many of whom I remain exceptionally close to this day.”
The Trump transition team did not respond to a request for a comment Wednesday on Guilfoyle’s nomination, the sexual misconduct allegations against her or her qualifications to be an ambassador. In a statement, Trump praised Guilfoyle for her loyalty and “her extensive experience and leadership in law, media, and politics.”
In the past, sexual misconduct allegations have been the subject of rigorous FBI background checks or tense confirmation hearings, such as the 2018 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing involving Christine Blasey Ford’s claims that future U.S. Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her in the early 1980s. After Kavanaugh denied the accusations, the committee voted along party lines to advance his confirmation to a full Senate vote.
When it comes to diplomatic posts, Eric Garcetti’s Senate nomination to become Biden’s ambassador to India stalled for 20 months – even though the former Los Angeles mayor wasn’t accused of sexual misconduct himself, as the Associated Press and NPR reported. Instead, he was accused of ignoring complaints of sexual harassment, allegedly committed by one of his mayoral aides. Iowa Senator Charles Grassley led an effort to hold up Garcett’s nomination and oversaw an investigative report into his actions with regard to the aide. Garcetti eventually confirmed in March 2023.
Grassley’s office did not respond to a request for comment on whether he would seek an investigation into Guilfoyle’s activities at Fox News. Spokespeople for several Democratic and Republican members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which holds confirmation hearings for top State Department posts, also did not respond to requests for comment.
Dolan said it’s not uncommon for presidents to reward allies with ambassadorships, though nominees usually possess applicable professional skills and may have an affinity for their assigned country’s culture. The current U.S. ambassador to Greece, George Tsunis, is Greek-American, and Greek is his first language, while Guilfoyle only said on X that she appreciates that “democratic values born in Greece … helped shape the founding of America.”
Like others, Dolan questioned the timing of Trump’s announcement, which came hours after the Daily Mail first broke the news that Trump Jr. has apparently gotten himself a new girlfriend, Palm Beach socialite named Bettina Anderson. While Trump Jr. and Guilfoyle have not publicly ended their six-year relationship or called off their engagement, commentators at Vanity Fair and other outlets are seeing the convenience in having Guilfoyle sent abroad for “a shiny new job.” Dolan also asked: “Is this the way to get her out of the way?”
But it remains to be seen whether Guilfoyle can win this support. She’s got “baggage,” as political observers would say, and not just because she may or may not still be engaged to Trump’s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr.
The former San Francisco prosecutor also has faced allegations that she engaged in sexual misconduct when she worked as a host at Fox News, reportedly subjecting a female assistant to “degrading, abusive, and sexually inappropriate behavior” and leaving the Rupert Murdoch-run network to pay out a multimillion-dollar settlement to avoid trial.
Guilfoyle is the latest Trump nominee for a high-level, public-facing government position to face allegations of sexual impropriety. It’s not clear yet whether such allegations will prove disqualifying for these jobs, with Trump barreling into his second term and insisting his government should be filled with loyalists. His party also controls the Senate, which is responsible for confirming nominees to positions in his Cabinet, in the federal courts and in the State Department.
But making Guilfoyle an ambassador with her alleged history “does continue the pattern that we have seen among a number of Trump nominees, one that he does not consider (sexual misconduct) a disqualifying issue in any forum,” said Kathleen Dolan, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee whose focus includes women and politics.
Trump himself has been accused of sexual misconduct or assault by at least 18 women and was found liable by a jury for sexually abusing a woman in a department store in the mid-1990s, the Washington Post said. The former reality TV star was first elected president in 2016, even after the release of the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape, where he could be heard saying he “can do anything” to women because he’s a “star.” Trump has repeatedly denied the accusations against him.
“It also a good mirror, I think, into where we still are in American society on sexual harassment,” Dolan said. “Half the country would say, ‘You can’t be the ambassador if you’ve been accused of this and your employer had to pay out millions of dollars to cover it up.’ And then, some part of the country, is, ‘Whatever, you know, boys will be boys, girls will be girls.’”
The Washington Post added that Trump’s willingness to pick people who face such accusations shows his insistence on placing loyalty above Washington norms and his tendency to play down accusations of sexual misconduct “as invented claims or the work of political enemies.”
Guilfoyle has been an enthusiastic campaigner and fundraiser for Trump, and she supported his false claims that he won the 2020 election over Joe Biden. Her nomination is a further indication that Trump wants to demonstrate “defiance” of these norms, perhaps point “a middle finger” and show “a new level of trying to own the libs,” Dolan also said.
Senate opposition did manage to end Trump’s nomination of former Florida congressman Matt Gaetz to head the Justice Department, with Gaetz still facing a House Ethics Committee investigation into alleged child sex abuse and illegal drug use.
But, for the time being, Trump appears to be standing by Pete Hegseth and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., his picks to head the Defense and Health and Human Services departments, respectively. They each have histories of being accused of sexual assault, which both have denied. Linda McMahon, Trump’s pick for education secretary and former World Wrestling Entertainment CEO, also has been accused in an October lawsuit of failing to prevent the sexual abuse of teenage WWE workers.
The allegations against Guilfoyle began to surface soon after she left her lucrative job at Fox News in July 2018. Among the reasons publicly given for her departure was that she wanted to work for a pro-Trump Super Pac as she began dating Trump Jr.
But a 2018 story by HuffPost and a 2020 investigation by the New Yorker revealed that the ex-wife of California Gov. Gavin Newsom was asked to leave Fox News following a human resources investigation into allegations of inappropriate behavior, including sexual misconduct. New Yorker writer Jane Mayer reported that the allegations involved Guilfoyle’s former assistant who filed a draft complaint. The young woman alleged that Guilfoyle frequently required her to work at Guilfoyle’s New York apartment while “The Five” host, her direct supervisor, displayed herself naked.
In her complaint, the assistant also said Guilfoyle showed her photographs of the genitalia of men with whom she had had sexual relations, Mayer reported. The complaint further alleged that Guilfoyle, a Roger Ailes protégée, “spoke incessantly and luridly about her sex life” and told the assistant she should sleep with wealthy and powerful men and submit to a Fox employee’s demands for sexual favors.
Under Ailes, Fox News became a hotbed of sexual harassment and retaliation, HuffPost reported. But the network worked to change its workplace culture after Ailes resigned in 2016, after he was accused of sexually harassing a number of female employees, including stars such as Gretchen Carlson, Megyn Kelly and Julie Roginsky.
Mayer also reported that the assistant accused Guilfoyle of trying to buy her silence, while Fox secretly paid her an undisclosed sum. Mayer said she was told that the sum was “upward of four million dollars.”
Guilfoyle denied the sexual misconduct allegations, both right after she left Fox News and, in a statement to the New Yorker in 2020, she said “In my 30-year career working for the SF District Attorney’s Office, the LA District Attorney’s Office, in media and in politics, I have never engaged in any workplace misconduct of any kind. During my career, I have served as a mentor to countless women, with many of whom I remain exceptionally close to this day.”
The Trump transition team did not respond to a request for a comment Wednesday on Guilfoyle’s nomination, the sexual misconduct allegations against her or her qualifications to be an ambassador. In a statement, Trump praised Guilfoyle for her loyalty and “her extensive experience and leadership in law, media, and politics.”
In the past, sexual misconduct allegations have been the subject of rigorous FBI background checks or tense confirmation hearings, such as the 2018 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing involving Christine Blasey Ford’s claims that future U.S. Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her in the early 1980s. After Kavanaugh denied the accusations, the committee voted along party lines to advance his confirmation to a full Senate vote.
When it comes to diplomatic posts, Eric Garcetti’s Senate nomination to become Biden’s ambassador to India stalled for 20 months – even though the former Los Angeles mayor wasn’t accused of sexual misconduct himself, as the Associated Press and NPR reported. Instead, he was accused of ignoring complaints of sexual harassment, allegedly committed by one of his mayoral aides. Iowa Senator Charles Grassley led an effort to hold up Garcett’s nomination and oversaw an investigative report into his actions with regard to the aide. Garcetti eventually confirmed in March 2023.
Grassley’s office did not respond to a request for comment on whether he would seek an investigation into Guilfoyle’s activities at Fox News. Spokespeople for several Democratic and Republican members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which holds confirmation hearings for top State Department posts, also did not respond to requests for comment.
Dolan said it’s not uncommon for presidents to reward allies with ambassadorships, though nominees usually possess applicable professional skills and may have an affinity for their assigned country’s culture. The current U.S. ambassador to Greece, George Tsunis, is Greek-American, and Greek is his first language, while Guilfoyle only said on X that she appreciates that “democratic values born in Greece … helped shape the founding of America.”
Like others, Dolan questioned the timing of Trump’s announcement, which came hours after the Daily Mail first broke the news that Trump Jr. has apparently gotten himself a new girlfriend, Palm Beach socialite named Bettina Anderson. While Trump Jr. and Guilfoyle have not publicly ended their six-year relationship or called off their engagement, commentators at Vanity Fair and other outlets are seeing the convenience in having Guilfoyle sent abroad for “a shiny new job.” Dolan also asked: “Is this the way to get her out of the way?”
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