Trump calls his globe-trotting ex-diplomat ‘my envoy.

Grenell met with a hard-line group that sued to block the inauguration. The group thanked him for his “visit and trust.” He defended Guatemalan officials who had seized ballot boxes to overturn a vote declared “free and fair” by the United States and international observers, and he attacked the U.S. State Department’s sanctions against hundreds of anti-democratic actors.

“They are trying to intimidate conservatives in Guatemala,” Grenell said in a television interview. “This is all wrapped into this kind of phony concern about democracy.”

Grenell’s intervention highlights the extraordinary role he has carved out in the three years since Trump left the White House. From Central America to Eastern Europe and beyond, Grenell has been acting as a kind of shadow secretary of state, meeting with far-right leaders and movements, pledging Trump’s support, and, at times, working against the current administration’s policies.

It’s unusual for a former diplomatic official to continue meeting with foreign leaders and promoting the agenda of a presidential candidate on the world stage. Grenell’s globe-trotting has sparked deep concern among career national security officials and diplomats, who warn that he emboldens bad actors and jeopardizes U.S. interests in service of Trump’s personal agenda. In the process, Grenell is openly charting a foreign policy road map for a Republican presidential nominee who has found common cause with authoritarian leaders and threatened to blow up partnerships with democratic allies.

“I think Trump and Grenell would upend American leadership of the free world, from Truman on the left to Reagan on the right, and replace it with something much darker,” said Daniel Fried, who spent four decades in top State Department posts, including as an assistant secretary of state and a director of the National Security Council. “It’s transactional. Democratic values are irrelevant, and it’s isolationist.”

Grenell declined to talk on the record about his overseas work.

His profile is rising in Trump’s MAGA movement, which hails him as a champion of the “America First” platform. Trump and his supporters view a second term as an opportunity to elevate his most loyal backers, who potentially would test traditional guardrails against abuse of executive power.

The former president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., in an online chat with Grenell last month, touted his record as ambassador to Germany and called him a “top contender for secretary of state.”

“Your name comes up a lot in some very high levels. You’re in there with the base,” Trump Jr. said, adding that Grenell was “probably the only ambassador who spoke truth to power.”

Grenell calls himself a diplomat but acts as a rapid-response, war-room director, perpetually exalting Trump and trolling his political foes on social media and in interviews.

“Grenell fulfills the top priority that Trump is looking for in his second term, which is absolute loyalty,” said Trump’s former national security adviser, John Bolton, who has called Trump “unfit” to be president and warned about a potential administration of enablers. “What a president’s advisers owe him is their opinions on what’s right, their sound judgment.”

Grenell is in regular contact with the former president and his family, though it’s unclear when or if he’s acting on Trump’s directions. Earlier this year, Grenell attended a small, private funeral for Trump’s mother-in-law, according to other guests. Social media posts show several visits to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., and his golf club in Bedminster, N.J. In an unusual statement by an ex-president, Trump gave one of Grenell’s recent foreign trips his blessing, calling him “My Envoy.”

In Guatemala, Grenell claimed on social media that he met with more than 45 political and business leaders during a days-long trip. In the Balkans, where he worked as an envoy under Trump, he has continued to talk to heads of state who are separately engaging with the Biden administration. Last year, as Turkey threatened Sweden’s pathway to joining NATO, Grenell tried to broker a meeting between Trump and the Turkish president, according to two people close to the former president who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung declined to comment on whether the former president endorses Grenell’s foreign activities.

“There has been no discussion of who will serve in a second Trump administration.” Cheung said. “President Trump will choose the best people for his Cabinet to undo all the damage Crooked Joe Biden has done to our country.”

Asked whether he is seeking a Cabinet-level position, Grenell has told reporters that he is busy campaigning for Trump’s reelection.

Federal law requires many people paid to advocate on behalf of foreign interests to register with the Justice Department and disclose their activities. When Grenell joined the Trump administration, amid revelations that his former public relations firm was paid by a nonprofit funded by the Hungarian government, his lawyer at the time said he did not need to register as a lobbyist. Bloomberg and the New York Times recently reported that Grenell and Trump’s son-in-law and former adviser Jared Kushner are proposing major real estate developments in the Balkans that could pose conflicts of interest if either of them serve in another Trump administration.

“This is private sector investment. This is not political,” Grenell said in a recent interview with an Albanian television station. “Jared and I are both not in government, and we are on the outside.”

Kushner did not respond to The Post’s requests for comment.

A divisive diplomat

The arc of Grenell’s political career tracks Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party.

A native of Grand Rapids, Mich., who obtained a master’s degree in public administration from the Harvard Kennedy School, he served as a spokesman for various Republican politicians and then for the U.S.

 ambassador to the United Nations for several years. During a brief stint as a spokesman for Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, Grenell deleted numerous snarky and sexist social media posts and apologized.

 (He resigned after some religious conservatives rejected him for being openly gay.)

He would not issue a public apology like that again. The following year, he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. “He always says that after cancer, he’s fearless and lives life without regrets,” said former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who is close with Grenell.

Grenell’s aptitude for tormenting liberals and journalists, viewed as a liability by the Romney campaign, became an asset after Trump’s election. The president who relished weaponizing social media against his political foes named Grenell, a Fox News contributor, as ambassador to Germany.

Grenell immediately offended his new host. Shortly after Trump pulled the United States out of a nuclear deal with Iran in May 2018, Grenell demanded that German businesses cut ties with Iran even though the country remained part of the agreement. One month later, some German politicians called for Grenell’s ouster after he said he wanted to “empower other conservatives throughout Europe” and praised an Austrian political leader allied with the far right. He also pushed a major drawdown of U.S. troops in Germany, which had failed to meet NATO targets for defense spending.

“He really animated the America-first ideology through diplomacy, and that was equal parts confidence, savvy, creativity and online snark,” said Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), a Trump ally and friend of Grenell’s. “It was effective. He got Germany to be less of an economic welfare case for the United States.”

Seasoned diplomats criticized Grenell for upending relations with a foreign partner, and later, for boosting Russian interests in the Balkans. While Grenell was still posted to Berlin in 2019, Trump tapped him to mediate between Kosovo and Serbia. Kosovo was recognized as a sovereign state by the United States but not by Serbia, long aligned with Russia. Grenell helped broker an agreement normalizing economic cooperation in the region. Kosovo’s prime minister accused Grenell of helping sink his left-wing administration and favoring Serbia’s president, but both countries subsequently honored Grenell for his work.

In early 2020, Trump appointed Grenell acting director of national intelligence, a sensitive post typically held by nonpartisan national security experts who have led intelligence agencies or served in the military. During three disruptive months as a Cabinet member, Grenell purged career intelligence professionals serving in what he characterized as a bloated counterterrorism bureaucracy, and he declassified documents sought by Republicans to argue against the investigation into Russian interference.

As Grenell stepped down in May 2020, Trump called him “the all-time great acting ever, at any position.”

He campaigned for the president’s reelection, and days after the vote, he and other Trump surrogates alleged at a news conference that “illegal votes” had tainted the results in Nevada. The state was soon called for Biden, but Grenell has continued to promote the false claim that voting fraud fueled Biden’s 2020 victory.

Grenell’s allegiance to Trump has proved fruitful during the Biden years.

In late 2021, he became a high-ranking executive at Newsmax, which has grown more popular with a right-wing audience that views Fox News as insufficiently pro-Trump. The Republican National Committee paid Grenell $135,000 for consulting that year, records show. Grenell received nearly $400,000 from two pro-Trump, tax-exempt organizations in 2022, the latest year tax filings were available.

Last year, Grenell was elected to the board overseeing the Conservative Political Action Conference, a standard-bearer for the conservative movement that has become an unofficial arm of the Trump campaign.

“You probably all have heard the buzz that Ric Grenell is probably likely to have an extremely important role in a Trump administration,” K.T. McFarland, a CPAC board member who served briefly as Trump’s deputy national security adviser, said at its February conference. Another speaker drew applause when he started a question to Grenell this way: “Let’s say that you’re the next secretary of state …”

Return to the Balkans