Kimberly Guilfoyle, an attorney and ex-Fox News host who was formerly engaged to Donald Trump Jr., emerged largely unscathed Wednesday from her confirmation hearing to be the U.S. ambassador to Greece.
Guilfoyle’s personal ties to President Donald Trump and his family went unmentioned by her or senators as she laid out her vision for the position to members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Those stated priorities included boosting domestic energy exports to Greece, particularly liquified natural gas, and strengthening the United States’s defense partnership with a NATO country the U.S. sees as vital to stability in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea.
Guilfoyle, who avoided any contentious moments with Democrats, was pressed on rising tensions between Greece and Turkey over maritime border disputes in the Mediterranean, to which she pledged to ensure the U.S. would protect and honor “our strategic, consistent, stable, and reliable allies with Greece.”
During a series of questions from Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Guilfoyle added that a mixture of international law, State Department policies, and President Donald Trump’s viewpoints should all be considered when responding to Turkish aggression toward Greece.
“All of those need to be applied to these complex matrices to make sure that we know that we are acting in the best interests of the United States,” Guilfoyle said.
Van Hollen expressed dissatisfaction with her answer, saying it “opened the door” to the administration not following international laws when dealing with possible foreign conflicts in the region.
“I would hope that the U.S. position is that we also respect maritime law and not support or look the other way when that’s being violated,” Van Hollen said. “But your answer, of course, opened the door to looking the other way, depending on other factors.”
Still, Guilfoyle was all but certain to be confirmed, given the Senate’s three-seat GOP majority and ambassadors frequently enjoying some level of bipartisan support. She testified with other Trump nominees to be ambassadors and U.S. representatives to the United Nations.
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News of Guilfoyle and Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, ending their engagement broke in December around the time the president nominated her, which also coincided with new photos of Trump Jr. holding hands with his new girlfriend, Florida socialite Bettina Anderson. A source close to the couple told the Washington Examiner at the time that Guilfoyle’s nomination to an overseas post was unrelated to the end of their six-year relationship.
“This had nothing to do with her personal relationship with Don,” the source said at the time. “The ambassadorship to Greece is something she has wanted, if Trump won, dating back nearly a year now.”
Naomi Lim contributed to this report.