"I absolutely want to empower other conservatives throughout Europe, other leaders," Grenell told Breitbart. Two months later, Grenell caused an international incident by telling the far right outlet Breitbart he intended to "empower" conservatives in Europe. In May 2018, Grenell sparked criticism after he appeared to threaten German businesses operating in Iran in the wake of Trump's controversial decision to withdraw the US from the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal. Grenell's tenure as US ambassador to Germany was tumultuous from the start. "President Trump's personalization of the presidency and his hard-charging, no-holds-barred behavior was emulated by many of those around him in MAGA world," she continues. But it was abundantly clear that Grenell was simply livid that his personal agenda had been spotlighted and he wasn't immediately getting his own way," Hill writes. "Given Grenell's stated low opinion of me and my colleague, I wondered at first why he had bothered to call me. Under Trump, Hill says that Sondland and Grenell "always invoked Trump's name or those of members of his family when pulling rank," leading to what she describes as conflicts of interest and a chaotic execution of foreign policy.
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In normal circumstances, a plenipotentiary is a diplomat authorized with full powers to sign treaties on behalf of their respective nation. They were Trump's personal plenipotentiaries." "They didn't take their cues from the State Department. "They were following his explicit direction, they said," Hill continues. Grenell, along with Gordon Sondland - the former US Ambassador to the European Union who later became a key witness in Trump's first impeachment saga - were "directing US policy from Brussels and Berlin, respectively," she writes. In her memoir "There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century," Hill illustrates the encounter as one of many instances where Trump and key figures in his administration conducted foreign policy outside of normal channels in order to bolster their own personal interests. In a tweet, Grenell denied Hill's account and described it as "fake news." "Then he threatened to call Donald Trump Jr., a close friend of his, to have me and a colleague 'sacked by tweet.'" "He went on to accuse my office of leaking information to the press," Hill writes. Hill, who served as the Senior Director for Europe and Russia on the National Security Council before departing in July 2019, recounts being so taken aback by the call from the ambassador, Richard Grenell, that she "had to write down and report in detail" what was said. See more stories on Insider's business page.įormer President Donald Trump's ambassador to Germany threatened to call his son to have Fiona Hill "sacked by tweet," Hill writes in her new book. Hill says Grenell, then Trump's ambassador to Germany, threatened to fire her via Don Jr. Richard Grenell made a peculiar threat to Fiona Hill, she writes in her book.