Jesse Binnall
Role at the time: Attorney for Kimberly Guilfoyle, in a written statement issued with co-counsel David M. Schwartz
Response to this claim
Eric Deters owes Kimberly Guilfoyle about $150,000 for speeches and consulting work she performed before her nomination as ambassador, and her request for payment was an effort to collect that debt.
“Eric Deters owes Ambassador Kimberly Guilfoyle approximately $150,000 for speeches and consulting work she performed for him long before she was nominated to serve as Ambassador. Mr. Deters has gone on national television to recast a contractual dispute as wrongdoing ... That is what Mr. Deters now calls a “quid pro quo”: a delinquent client being asked to pay an overdue bill. ... When Ms. Guilfoyle was preparing to leave private life for public service, she did what any professional does and tried to close out her outstanding receivables. Asking a client to pay for work already done is not corruption. It is the opposite of corruption.”
Why we used this label
The reference point is Eric Deters's allegation that Kimberly Guilfoyle, shortly before her July 2025 Senate confirmation hearing, asked him to pay her $100,000 American Express bill while offering to help him reach senior Trump administration officials. Challenged the characterization: the lawyers do not deny that Guilfoyle asked Deters for money; they dispute his description of the request as an exchange for access and describe it as an attempt to collect a debt for past work. The closest competing label is Denied; it loses because the statement recasts the request rather than saying it did not happen, even though it also calls Deters's statements false.