Scott Jennings Suggests Republican Megadonor Committed ‘Extortion’ With Messages to White House

CNN conservative commentator Scott Jennings suggested that Eric Deters, once a donor to President Donald Trump, may have engaged in “extortion” by pressuring the White House to respond to his demands and threatening to sue former U.S. Ambassador to Greece, Kimberly Guilfoyle.

A bombshell report from The Wall Street Journal recently alleged that Guilfoyle, Donald Trump Jr.’s former fiancée, asked Deters for $100,000 to pay off her American Express bill in exchange for political influence.

That, along with follow-up reporting from the Journal revealing that Guilfoyle allegedly bragged about “her close ties to two Greek tycoons and said they were bankrolling her high-rolling trips around the world,” led the president to ask for her resignation earlier on Tuesday. Guilfoyle complied, while continuing to deny all allegations against her.

During a Monday CNN appearance, Deters ripped the former ambassador’s actions as “grifting on the highest level” and vowed to sue Guilfoyle and her attorneys for defamation. He disputed claims from Guilfoyle’s attorneys that she had merely been attempting to collect roughly $150,000 in unpaid fees for previous speaking engagements and consulting work, insisting that he owed her nothing.

“I’ve communicated with the Trump administration today,” Deters added. “I let them know I’m gonna be suing them for defamation and the story’s not gonna go away.”

In a subsequent CNN appearance on Tuesday, the former Trump donor confirmed that he has not yet heard back from the White House on his further request, which he had previously sought Guilfoyle’s help with, to extradite Abubakar Atiq Durrani, a spine surgeon from Ohio who fled to Pakistan after facing charges in the U.S. of performing unneeded surgeries and defrauding insurance companies.

“The White House made a very strategic error,” he claimed. “If they don’t respond and continue the extradition [of Durrani], I’m going to continue my pounding away at Kimberly Guilfoyle.”

On Tuesday’s edition of CNN NewsNight, Jennings said of the former U.S. ambassador’s departure, “The president made the correct call on this.”

“There’s something about the allegations from Deters,” he continued, “that have been a little unsettling to me… He has been saying that he has been emailing the White House chief of staff, saying, ‘If you don’t take these actions that I demand of you, I’m going to enact retribution, political retribution, by releasing this information.”

“Yeah, that’s against the law,” agreed former Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA), a fellow panelist.

“So, that’s my question,” Jennings went on. “I don’t know the answer to this, but is that extortion in the legal sense? Because it sounds like it to me, but I’m a layperson. But it’s very unsettling to me.”

“I think it could very well be,” offered host Abby Phillip.

Watch above on CNN.

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