Former White House ethics czar Norm Eisen said he could not believe what he was reading in Kimberly Guilfoyle’s newly revealed text messages.
Eisen, who served in the Obama White House and later as U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic, appeared on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360” on Wednesday to discuss a Wall Street Journal report on Guilfoyle’s Signal messages, which The Journal reports show her asking Trump donor Eric Deters to send her $100,000 to pay off her American Express debt. Guilfoyle is the U.S. ambassador to Greece.
“It’s one of the worst things that I have ever seen with respect to a U.S. ambassador,” Eisen told Cooper. “It stinks to high heaven.”
Eisen said the messages raise serious questions about whether there was a quid pro quo involving Guilfoyle while she was a nominee, noting that nominees are covered by a federal bribery statute.
“I’m not saying that there was bribery here. Bribery is tough to prove, Ambassador Guilfoyle denies it, but these texts are like nothing I’ve ever seen,” he said. “It’s not just that there seems to be an exchange of cash for access, but Anderson, text after text saying it’s private.”
Eisen pointed to messages urging secrecy around the money, including one he described as a suggestion to send it to American Express because “it won’t show.” He said that kind of language points to a consciousness of wrongdoing.
Cooper noted that Guilfoyle has not been accused of any crime or investigated, and asked whether it mattered that a $100,000 payment to her credit card was apparently never made.
Eisen said that if it were determined there was “a wrongful agreement,” it would raise “a very serious set of questions,” though he acknowledged the legal bar has been raised considerably, a shift he said he disagrees with.
He added that this isn’t the first controversy for Guilfoyle, citing questions about whether she has been too close to an energy company and a lobbyist in Greece. If Congress changes hands, he said, the matter would likely become part of a congressional investigation.
“Often when you see these kinds of allegations and an investigation begins, questions arise about what else may have gone on,” Eisen said. “I have never seen anything like these Signal messages… But there are some of the most serious questions that I’ve seen about a sitting United States ambassador. I can’t believe my eyes.”
Guilfoyle has denied any wrongdoing.
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