Kimberly Guilfoyle is Trump’s latest nominee from his family tree : NPR

President-elect Donald Trump will nominate Kimberly Guilfoyle to function ambassador to Greece, the newest of his picks to have an in depth connection to a member of his household.

“For a few years, Kimberly has been an in depth buddy and ally,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Tuesday. “Her in depth expertise and management in legislation, media, and politics alongside together with her sharp mind make her supremely certified to symbolize america, and safeguard its pursuits overseas.”

Guilfoyle, a former Fox Information persona, has lengthy been a fixture of Trump’s world: She served because the Trump marketing campaign’s finance chair throughout his 2020 run and has continued to behave as a surrogate, together with delivering fiery speeches at the newest two Republican Nationwide Conventions.

As a key witness of the occasions main as much as the Capitol riot — and a fundraiser for that rally’s organizers — she testified earlier than the House Jan. 6 panel in 2022.

Guilfoyle can also be the longtime accomplice of his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr. The 2 began relationship in 2018 and received engaged in 2020.

The standing of their relationship is at present unclear, nonetheless. On Tuesday morning, hours earlier than Trump’s ambassador announcement, tabloid images of Don Jr. holding arms with a Palm Seaside socialite (additionally noticed within the household field on the RNC this summer season) fueled rumors about a breakup.

Trump Jr. stated in a tweet that he was happy with Guilfoyle, writing that “she loves America and he or she at all times has wished to serve the nation as an Ambassador.”

Guilfoyle stated she accepts the nomination, a job that requires Senate confirmation. She wrote on social media that she appears ahead to “delivering on the Trump agenda, supporting our Greek allies, and ushering in a brand new period of peace and prosperity.”

“It was the democratic values born in Greece that helped form the founding of America,” she wrote. “And now, we have now a possibility to honor that historical past by bringing higher days right here at residence and overseas.”

It is not unusual for presidents to reward allies with ambassadorships. In actual fact, the American Overseas Service Affiliation says it has been “common practice for many years” for presidents to fill roughly 30 % of chief-of-mission positions with political allies, together with rich donors, versus selecting profession overseas service members.

Trump is not the primary president to choose relations, in-laws included, for the job — or to face criticism for doing so.

A few of Trump’s picks come from his household tree

Guilfoyle’s nomination is the newest drawn from Trump’s prolonged household.

Earlier this month, Trump named Massad Boulos — a billionaire, Lebanese American businessman and the father-in-law of his daughter Tiffany — as a senior adviser on Arab and Center Jap affairs.

Boulos, who twice ran unsuccessfully for parliament in Lebanon, has longstanding ties to powerbrokers in that nation. He most just lately helped lead the Trump marketing campaign’s outreach efforts to Arab American communities in Michigan.

His son Michael married Tiffany Trump at Mar-a-Lago in 2022.

Trump selected one other of his youngsters’s in-laws for an ambassadorship final month, saying he intends to appoint actual property mogul Charles Kushner — whom he pardoned from numerous federal prices throughout his first time period — because the ambassador to France.

Kushner is the daddy of Jared Kushner, the previous White Home senior adviser to Trump who’s married to Trump’s oldest daughter, Ivanka.

It’s not clear what if any official function Trump’s youngsters will play in his administration. Ivanka stated after her father’s reelection marketing campaign announcement in 2022 that she did “not plan to be concerned in politics,” selecting to concentrate on her household’s non-public life.

It is commonplace for presidents to appoint relations

President John F. Kennedy nominated his brother Robert Kennedy as U.S. legal professional basic in 1961. They’re pictured that 12 months on the White Home with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.

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There’s a lengthy historical past of presidents tapping members of the family to serve of their administrations, beginning with John Adams appointing his son, John Quincy Adams, because the minister to Prussia.

Various presidents saved relations on the White Home payroll all through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, many as secretaries, aides or unofficial advisers, in line with the National Constitution Center.

They embrace James Madison, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, John Tyler, James Buchanan, Zachary Taylor, Ulysses Grant, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower.

In 1961, John F. Kennedy appointed his brother-in-law, R. Sargent Shriver, because the director of the Peace Corps. He additionally appointed his brother Robert Kennedy as U.S. legal professional basic, a place to which he was confirmed and served for 3 years.

RFK’s nomination was so controversial that it prompted the enactment of the Federal Anti-Nepotism Statute in 1967, nicknamed the “Bobby Kennedy legislation.” It forbids public officers from appointing relations to a “civilian place within the company through which he’s serving or over which he workouts jurisdiction or management.”

The measure has been examined a number of instances, together with when Invoice Clinton tasked Hillary Clinton with main a well being reform process drive within the ’90s and when Trump named Kushner a senior advisor throughout his first time period.

Specialists have disagreed over time about methods to interpret the statute, with many — together with a federal choose ruling within the Clinton case in 1993 — sustaining that it would not apply to the presidency as a result of the White Home would not rely as an “company.”