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Knives Out! Habba versus Grenell and Zampolli versus Landau and Guilfoyle versus Everyone and Everyone versus Wiles
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I’m not sure if there’s one precipitating factor causing the flood of nasty in-fighting among Trump’s top people — though Serbia and Venezuela appear to be hot-buttons.But I do know it has gotten hard to keep track of.
Kimberly Guilfoyle
Start with Kimberly Guilfoyle. The source of her downfall is a guy named Eric Deters, who had paid Guilfoyle some ton of money to get an extradition, to get little in return. WSJ had a slew of stories, of which most aired that Deters’ complaints.
September 25: The Mystery Man Shadowing Kimberly Guilfoyle as She Pushes Deals Across Europe
October 7: ‘Honey Please’: Kimberly Guilfoyle Pushed Donor to Wire $100,000 to Her Amex Account
October 10: At Davos, Kimberly Guilfoyle Boasted of Private Jet Trips, Luxury Stays
October 13: Kimberly Guilfoyle Resigns as U.S. Ambassador to Greece
October 13: Inside Kimberly Guilfoyle’s Final Days as Ambassador to Greece
Don’t miss The Bulwark’s interviews with Deters (one, two), in which Sam Stein asks Deters if he isn’t sort of extorting everyone here.
After Guilfoyle’s resignation, the Daily Mail reminded that it had busted up the Guilfoyle-Don Jr relationship in the first place and quoted some Trumpsters imagining that Guilfoyle may exact her revenge.
Allies of the president are said to be relieved that Guilfoyle is leaving her post, but insiders have warned the Trump family may not have heard the last of her.
‘Having her back in America would be a nightmare. Kimberly knows where the bodies are buried. She knows the people, the secrets, the fights, the relationships,’ one source told the Daily Mail.
‘Nobody wants an angry Kimberly back home with nothing to lose.’
Her firing now raises the prospect of her former fiancé Don Jr and the rest of the Trump family and their cronies facing that fallout.
I’d love to see it. Guilfoyle knows where a lot of bodies are buried. Remember, she played a key role in the insurrection in 2020!
But sadly, I don’t think she has the talent to negotiate the criminal legal exposure to do that.
James Blair and Chris LaCivita
Meanwhile, NYT revealed that after James Blair had left the White House in order to try to salvage the midterms for the GOP, he and Chris LaCivita were instead in Serbia helping pro-Russian
October 6: Amid Midterm Crunch, Trump Advisers Took Time to Help Russia-Aligned Government
Buried in that first story and a number of follow-ups was the detail that Susie Wiles’ daughter was also in Serbia making bank.
Sadly, I don’t think the prospect of top Trump aides cashing in on helping Russian puppets was a problem for Trump. As the story mentioned, though mostly in passing, Don Jr has been cozying up to the same people. I think the problem is that Republicans are facing disaster and … Blair is nowhere to be seen. Or rather, is seen someplace where he’ll be of little use to the GOP, unless they’re trading work in Serbia for Russian interference in the US.
That led a lot of the endangered Republicans to bitch and bitch.
And so Trump played dumb about the disclosure, claiming he might fire them.
We’ve seen this play before with Paul Manafort, among others. I doubt much will come of it.
Alina Habba and Ric Grenell
Then there’s Alina Habba and Ric Grenell. On Monday, NYT explained some of the mystery behind Habba’s marriage to a much younger billionaire Turkish dude, Turhan Mildon.
October 12: A Trump Loyalist, a Turkish Investor and a Battle for Wealth and Influence
While both deny there’s anything utilitarian about this marriage, the story describes how Mildon’s cement contract in Venezuela posed a problem.
Before the United States captured Mr. Maduro, aides to Mr. Trump and some U.S. intelligence officials expressed concern about Mr. Mildon’s work with the Maduro government, according to multiple people briefed on the matter. Mr. Mildon had spent months trying to build ties between Alex Saab, one of Mr. Maduro’s closest confidants in Venezuela, and Republicans in Mr. Trump’s orbit. The Trump administration had considered placing sanctions on Mr. Mildon, two people involved in the discussions at the time said.
Once Mr. Maduro was out of the picture, things for Mr. Mildon got even worse.
Until he married Habba, and then Delcy Rodriguez reconsidered terminating his cement contract.
But there was a bright spot: Mr. Mildon had met Ms. Habba, one of Mr. Trump’s most prominent legal defenders. They started dating this year, soon after Mr. Maduro’s downfall. By this past summer, the couple’s burgeoning romance had begun to draw attention. Specifically, it caught the eye of Ms. Rodríguez, according to two people close to her. Mr. Mildon was in a serious relationship with a woman who had high-level access to Mr. Trump — the one person keeping Ms. Rodríguez in power.
Since taking office, Ms. Rodríguez has been trying to balance the interests of the competing MAGA factions, and gauging their relative influence over Mr. Trump. After learning of Mr. Mildon’s powerful allies, she decided to pause her order terminating his cement contracts, allowing him to continue to profit from them, according to people familiar with her thinking
While the NYT does not say definitively who introduced Mildon and Habba (a report when they married said a diplomatic source introduced them, which for a slew of reasons made me wonder if Tom Barrack had) but it implies that Mildon met Habba at some Kennedy Center events back when Ric Grenell — who keeps finding himself on the losing side of Trump’s Venezuelan adventures — ran the joint.
He became a frequent guest at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, where he networked with the man in charge of the institution at the time, Richard Grenell. Mr. Grenell was also working as Mr. Trump’s special envoy to Venezuela, and trying to broker Mr. Maduro’s exit from power.
Mr. Grenell introduced Mr. Mildon to some of the MAGA crowd. Mr. Mildon’s spokesman said his client and Ms. Habba had first met at an event at the Kennedy Center in late 2025, and started dating in early 2026.
Just one day later, Axios described a big blow-up between Habba and Grenell over a payment Mildon claims Grenell received but did not deposit.
October 14: Exclusive: White House probes claims of missing Kennedy Center money in “MAGA blood feud”
In the matter of days, Ric Grenell went from chasing the baseless Talarico smear to demanding that Caputo demand proof before posting Habba’s hit job on him.
Update: In a story matching WSJ, NYT reveals Mildon may actually be just 25. Habba is 42.
Paolo Zampolli versus Christopher Landau
Which brings me to Paolo Zampolli — the guy who claims to have introduced Melania and Donald — versus Christopher Landau — the far right Deputy Secretary of State whose father was a diplomat (and who therefore may be one of just a handful of people in the Trump Administration who knows or cares how agencies are supposed to run).
October 15: Nasty email fight between 2 top Trump appointees spills into the open
I have no fucking clue (yet) why we’re getting this now. The Politico story describing it traces a dispute that started last November and continued until this July, when Dan Scavino broke up the fight by putting Sarah Rogers (whose far right shenanigans make her pro-Russian by default) between the two of them. Landau kept trying to rein in Zampolli’s extracurricular activities, and Zampolli kept making it clear that Landau is not the boss of him.
Even though he’s assigned to the State Department, Zampolli, who last year posted on social media that he’s “never had a boss in my life,” has publicly indicated that typical bureaucratic org charts do not apply to him.
“My number-one boss is the president of America,” Zampolli told the Financial Times. “I get my instructions from the White House, Commerce and the Department of War … anything to advance the America First agenda.”
But many of his Instagram posts also appear to provide backup to Landau’s assertions that Zampolli has gone far beyond his remit on cultural issues, including posts of meeting the energy minister of Romania, working on nuclear energy issues in Hungary, attending World Bank/International Monetary Fund meetings, meeting with the United Arab Emirates’ director of foreign direct investment and even discussing with an Argentine official how to send that country’s astronauts to space.
I mean, Zampolli knows the secret that Melania and Donald are hiding about Epstein, so I’m certain Landau is not the boss of Zampolli.
What I find interesting is that, in June, Zampolli reportedly pinned the March NYT story describing how Zampolli got his ex-baby mama deported to Brazil on Landau, which makes zero sense — much of the story seemed sourced to Amanda Ungaro herself, but also to the people at ICE whom Zampolli asked to make it happen. Or possibly Corey Lewandowski.
In one particularly heated exchange on June 19, Zampolli asked State Department Inspector General Arne Baker to investigate Landau, complaining that Landau was restricting his authority. Zampolli asked for a meeting with Baker to discuss his concerns about Landau. (A spokesperson for the inspector general declined to comment on whether any investigation was opened.)
The same day, Zampolli accused Landau of being the source for a New York Times story “that caused irrepable [sic] harm to the First Lady and to my family.” He doesn’t cite the Times story. But several months earlier in March, the Times reported that during a custody battle, Zampolli had asked Immigration and Customs Enforcement to deport Amanda Ungaro, the mother of Zampolli’s son, to Brazil, to help him gain custody of their teenage son. The story mentions Melania Trump in passing. Zampolli denied that he ever asked ICE to detain Ungaro.
As I said, that makes zero sense and it makes less sense that Zampolli would wait three months to try to pin it on Landau and it would take four more months — until right before the GOP gets hammered in midterms — for a story told to 16 different people on an email chain would get told.
But it’s that kind of fortnight, I guess.
Incidentally, Zampolli is also being sued by a woman who claims he raped her in October 2023.
Update: Oh. This is why this got aired in the press.
Susie Wiles
Which brings us, finally, the a Politico Playbook piece today describing that Trump is entertaining replacing Susie Wiles (who, by the way, I had thought was leaving after the election anyway).
October 15: Trump’s ice maiden is under fire
It includes some names of insane people and some names of people who’d be insane replacements for Wiles.
Trump has floated several people who could replace Wiles as chief of staff: The senior elected Republican official said the president had mentioned Stephen Miller, his deputy chief of staff, and Randy Levine, the president of the New York Yankees, as an outside-the-building option.
Trump is also considering Steve Witkoff, Bill Pulte and Kevin McCarthy, people close to the president told us. Allies of McCarthy, the former House speaker, have been arguing that he could help Trump handle a hostile Democratic Congress.
But they key part is someone appears to have leveraged Susie’s daughter, Katie’s, corruption in Serbia to put a target on Susie.
Trump has bristled at recent reports showing several longtime advisers are profiting from foreign consulting business, including top Wiles allies James Blair and Chris LaCivita(see the NYT). Katie Wiles, the chief of staff’s daughter, was reported (see the FT) to be representing Republika Srpska, the pro-Russian, semi-autonomous Bosnian Serb territory for which Blair and LaCivita also did work. Trump was not previously aware of Katie Wiles’ foreign work and rivals of Susie Wiles have made sure the headlines surrounding her daughter reached the president, one person close to the president said.
“Susie has this whole cadre of people that have been found to have been monetizing his ecosystem pretty dramatically,” a senior outside adviser told Playbook.
As I noted yesterday, some of the people most responsible for the ass-handing that Republicans are about to suffer are attempting to dodge the blame even while making juvenile efforts to stave it off.
And meanwhile, a bunch of vultures are buzzing around the vacuum of a policy process trying to make bank, trying to take out rivals in public and private.
Let’s hope they reveal enough that we can use it to reclaim the country from these horrible people.
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