“We can do this to any country”: Trump's ambassador boasted about toppling the Romanian government

The Americans wanted to sell expensive LNG to Romania, and the PSD energy minister pushed for the deal with the involvement of an intermediary, but Ilie Bolojan did not show sufficient enthusiasm. Afterwards, one of Donald Trump's closest political confidants boasted at a dinner in Athens about the Romanian government's imminent collapse. Two months later, Bolojan's cabinet did indeed fall, thanks to the joint effort of the PSD and AUR.

Kimberly Guilfoyle, the United States' ambassador to Greece, hinted at a dinner in Athens in March at the imminent fall of Romania's government, then told the Greek energy minister: Washington can do the same to any other country.

“We can do this to any country. We can do it here too.”

– Guilfoyle said, according to the Wall Street Journal's sources. At the dinner, attended by Greek and American officials, Guilfoyle clashed with Greek Energy Minister Stavros Papastavrou. Papastavrou reportedly replied that the United States could not replace a government elected by Greek voters. Guilfoyle's lawyer later disputed the version described by the Wall Street Journal, but that hardly makes the story any less foul.

Kimberly Guilfoyle is not a career diplomat. She was previously a Fox News host, worked on Donald Trump's election campaign, and for a long time was Donald Trump Jr.'s fiancée; her appointment as ambassador to Greece is owed not to decades of diplomatic experience but to her ties to the Trump family and the MAGA movement. The Wall Street Journal article, moreover, is not primarily about Romania but about the strange entanglement between Guilfoyle and an energy lobbyist named Christos Marafatsos, who appeared at so many official meetings alongside the ambassador that some foreign officials mistook him for her chief of staff, when in fact he is one of the leading lobbyists for the Aktor Group. Aktor is originally a construction company, a relatively new player in energy trading, and more recently, together with the Greek state-backed DEPA, it would import American liquefied natural gas into Greece and then forward it via the Vertical Corridor to Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, Ukraine, Hungary and Slovakia. According to the Wall Street Journal, Guilfoyle pushed for the Bulgarian leadership to do business with Aktor. The company's CEO had previously flown the ambassador on his private jet, while Aktor's lobbyist regularly sat beside her at official negotiations. The goal was simple: the Trump administration wanted to sell several billion dollars' worth of American LNG to Central and Eastern Europe, which is not surprising in itself. The United States wants to sell gas, and European countries want to break away from Russia; the trouble begins when an American ambassador starts representing the interests of a specific business group as state policy, and then boasts about toppling the government of the country that was not enthusiastic enough about the deal put in front of it.

On January 16, then-PSD Energy Minister Bogdan Ivan sent a letter to President Nicușor Dan and Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan, asking them to have Romania sign an intergovernmental agreement with the United States for the purchase of American LNG, with a Romanian intermediary, Nova Gas&Trade, also playing a role in the arrangement. Ivan requested a separate negotiating mandate for the Ministry of Energy, backed additionally by the foreign ministry, the defense ministry and the SRI, since he considered the deal simultaneously a political, economic and national security matter. However, Romanian private companies showed no interest in the American gas because of its high price, which is entirely understandable, since Romania is not an isolated island devoid of energy sources: OMV Petrom and Romgaz plan to begin extraction from the Neptun Deep field in the Black Sea in 2027. In other words, Romania would have had to commit to a long-term purchase of expensive American LNG—shipped to Greece and then transported through several countries—right when its own significant gas source was about to enter the market. Bolojan did not oppose the infrastructure of the Vertical Corridor itself, as he supported developing the network connecting Greece, Bulgaria, Romania and other countries in the region, particularly increasing the capacity of the Bulgarian section, but it appears he did not want the Romanian state tied to an expensive American gas deal. He also warned that the project could require an investment of six to seven billion euros, while it is not even certain there would be enough buyers in the region to operate the system economically. Nicușor Dan likewise said that Romania is interested in an American presence, but only if the cooperation is also advantageous for Romania.

The Athens dinner uncovered by the Wall Street Journal took place in March, when Guilfoyle spoke of the Romanian government's imminent fall and then stated that the United States could do this to any country. On March 31, the ambassador met in Bucharest with PSD leader Sorin Grindeanu, Energy Minister Bogdan Ivan, U.S. Ambassador to Bucharest Darryl Nirenberg, and presidential advisor Florin Vlădică. Grindeanu now says that with Guilfoyle they discussed only the Vertical Corridor, and that speculation about an American-orchestrated government collapse is “pure fabrication.” Let's be clear: the PSD leader intended this as a denial, yet it amounts to an admission that he was in fact negotiating with Trump's envoy over exactly the energy deal that Bolojan was unwilling to greenlight unconditionally. Well done—we believe him. (As if!)

The timeline of the story looks like this:

• On January 16, Bogdan Ivan pushed for the purchase of American LNG with the involvement of a Romanian intermediary;

• In March, Guilfoyle spoke in Athens about the imminent fall of the Bolojan government;

• On March 31, Guilfoyle met with Grindeanu and Ivan in Bucharest; around this time the PSD was already deliberating leaving the government;

• In April, the Social Democrats left the cabinet;

• On May 5, a joint no-confidence motion by the PSD, AUR and PACE, with 281 votes, toppled Bolojan.

So Guilfoyle first predicted the fall of the Romanian government, then stated that America could do this to any country. She then met with the leaders of the party that a few weeks later left the government and, together with AUR, brought it down—let Washington, Bucharest and the PSD explain the rest.

Bolojan is gone, the American gas corridor remains

The particularly fitting conclusion to this story is that the Vertical Corridor made its way into Siegfried Mureșan's government program, submitted on Saturday. According to the document, Romania, in cooperation with the United States, would become a regional energy platform, strengthening its role as a transit country and completing the Romanian sections of the corridor. So Bolojan's government fell, but the project pushed by the Americans outlived him and is now officially part of the next cabinet's program. Building the pipeline is of course not the same as buying expensive American gas through a middleman, which is precisely why the business arrangement should be made public: how much LNG would arrive, at what price, under what state guarantees, and which companies would profit from it. But the matter cannot be dismissed by saying Guilfoyle drank too much wine at dinner, made an exaggerated boast, and forgot about it the next day. A sitting American ambassador boasted about bringing down the government of a NATO ally, while trying to push through multibillion-dollar American energy deals in the same region.

• If she was only lying, then she was trying to intimidate a member of the Greek government like a political gangster.

• If she was telling the truth, then Washington interfered in the domestic politics of an allied country for the sake of a business and geopolitical goal.

Either way, Guilfoyle should go, and the truth is that any one of these MAGA-compatible Trump sycophants could be swapped out for another. The Romanian parliament, meanwhile, should set up an investigative committee, and the full agenda of the March 31 Bucharest meeting, the notes of the participants, Bogdan Ivan's correspondence, the American side's offers, and the roles of Nova Gas&Trade, Aktor, DEPA and Christos Marafatsos should all be made public. Oh, and Grindeanu should also be asked whether, when he was discussing the American gas deal with Trump's ambassador at the end of March, he already knew that within a few weeks he would pull the PSD out of the government and, together with AUR, bring down Bolojan—or whether that thought only occurred to him later, purely by coincidence.

Op-ed