The Misconduct Allegations That Plagued Kimberly Guilfoyle At Fox News

The Trump family is certainly no stranger to controversy, and it looks like Kimberly Guilfoyle, who has been engaged to Donald Trump Jr. since 2020, is no different. Before she became a member of former President Donald Trump's closest inner circle, Guilfoyle was a Fox News personality who left her post abruptly in a haze of shocking sexual misconduct allegations.

While the timing of Guilfoyle's departure from Fox News lined up with her transition to work for her future father-in-law, it appears that the real reason she left has far less to do with a new job opportunity and more to do with the accusations lobbied against Guilfoyle by a former assistant. HuffPost reported in July 2018 that several anonymous sources confirmed Guilfoyle's exit from the network was not voluntary.

Guilfoyle and her legal representatives have maintained her innocence, insisting that she was a well-respected member of Fox News and the decision to leave was her own. However, public multi-million dollar payments made to the assistant who first filed the complaint have done little to quell suspicion surrounding Guilfoyle's behavior.

News of Kimberly Guilfoyle's former assistant's staggering 42-page complaint against her ex-boss first broke just before the 2020 presidential election, during which Guilfoyle was a key figure in then-President Donald Trump's re-election campaign. The New Yorker published a jaw-dropping exposé detailing the complaints the assistant made and anonymous sources who were able to corroborate them in October 2020.

The assistant alleged Guilfoyle required her to work from her boss' home while Guilfoyle was barely or not clothed at all. Additionally, the complaint said Guilfoyle demanded her employee massage her thighs, evaluate her nude body, and even encouraged the assistant to perform sexual favors for other Fox employees. The report alleged Guilfoyle watched pornographic videos in her office and regularly showed her colleagues pictures of men's genitalia on her phone, sometimes even identifying who the men were. 

The claims that Guilfoyle worked out of her home while barely dressed and regularly showed her colleagues explicit images were corroborated by unnamed sources who spoke to New Yorker reporter Jane Mayer. "You can't expose an assistant to that," an anonymous Fox employee told the outlet at the time of the report. "They really put [the assistant] through the wringer. It was a justifiable complaint. She's a very nice kid. She's not a nefarious person. It was a hostile workplace."

Kimberly Guilfoyle's former assistant also worked under Eric Bolling, who was the subject of another sexual misconduct investigation that started two years before Guilfoyle's departure. In her 42-page complaint to Fox News executives, the assistant claimed Guilfoyle offered her money, trips to Europe on a private plane, and career opportunities in exchange for not disclosing any questionable behavior to the investigators — a move not all that unsimilar to the payments at the center of Donald Trump's hush money trial.

The Trump campaign, for its part, has never commented on Guilfoyle's controversy. "I think it's worth pointing out that the person atop the Trump campaign, President Trump himself, has been accused by dozens of women of sexually harassing behavior. So, this is maybe a story that the president and his campaign don't want to touch," remarked NPR's David Folkenflick in October 2020.

Although Guilfoyle denied all the explosive claims against her through her legal representatives, Fox News reportedly ended up paying the former assistant $4 million in an out-of-court settlement. That payment, paired with the corroborating stories from other Fox News employees, certainly doesn't do much to paint Guilfoyle in a less guilty light. Indeed, the shocking allegations make even the most awkward Guilfoyle moments captured by millions seem like non-issues when compared to her potential behavior behind closed doors.