RICKETY RESUME

Scandal-Hit Trump Goon Admits Secret Truth About His Job

And he used to employ bar exam failure Katie Zacharia as “general counsel.”

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A high-profile “special envoy” for Donald Trump has admitted to the Daily Beast that his role secretly ended months ago.

Ric Grenell, 60, is no longer the U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Special Missions, he told the Daily Beast on Monday. A State Department official also confirmed that he is no longer employed by the agency.

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Grenell said that his time had ended in February of this year and claimed his appointment as special envoy was always meant to expire when it did. The Daily Beast could find no previous public statement giving such an expiry date.

Grenell, a prolific social media poster, had never acknowledged the end of his role until now—when he finds himself in the middle of a growing scandal over allegations that cash vanished from a donation to the Kennedy Center, which he also ran under Trump.

The State Department official said that “Mr. Grenell is no longer a Special Envoy and is not employed by the State Department.” The agency did not immediately respond to additional questions about Grenell’s tenure.

The White House, for its part, directed the Daily Beast to the State Department.

Since his special envoy status ended, Grenell has repeatedly been called by the title, and has called himself “special envoy” at least once.

A joint Instagram post by Grenell and the Conservative Political Action Conference dated Oct. 6 prominently identified him by just one title: Special Presidential Envoy for Special Missions of the United States.

He also posted a picture to Instagram in September showing a print-out signed by Trump of a picture of Grenell in a tuxedo, with a caption underneath describing him as “special envoy.” In his own caption, Grenell said the picture was from the premier of Melania, the Melania Trump documentary. That took place in March, after—by his account—he was no longer an envoy.

Trump handpicked his loyalist for the role in December 2024, before his second administration began.

“I am pleased to announce Richard Allen Grenell as our Presidential Envoy for Special Missions,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post just a month after winning the 2024 election. “Ric will work in some of the hottest spots around the World, including Venezuela and North Korea.”

“Ric will continue to fight for Peace through Strength, and always put AMERICA FIRST,” he added. “Congratulations Ric!” Grenell took up the appointment on Jan. 20, 2025.

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The Trump administration has claimed that many special envoy appointments are temporary. Kristi Noem, for example, served only six months in her made-up role as Special Envoy for the Shield of the Americas after she was booted as Homeland Security secretary.

During the first Trump administration, Grenell served as ambassador to Germany, special presidential envoy for Serbia and Kosovo peace negotiations, and acting director of national intelligence. He also jockeyed for the plum secretary of state job under Trump 2.0, but the president ultimately chose Marco Rubio.

Grenell is perhaps best known for his disastrous year-long tenure as president of the Kennedy Center. He worked alongside Trump to give the storied cultural institution a MAGA makeover, which led to a sharp decline in ticket sales, boycotts by top performers, and the eventual shuttering of the 45-year-old venue.

But now Grenell is mired in scandal over his tenure. Axios first reported that former Trump lawyer Alina Habba and her new billionaire husband, Turhan Mildon, are accusing Grenell of failing to deposit a multimillion-dollar donation to the Kennedy Center.

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The simmering MAGA feud stems from Habba’s accusation that her husband followed Grenell’s instructions to transfer $17.6 million to the Texas firm TX-AT in May 2025, $5.6 million of which was supposed to go to the Kennedy Center. But she claimed the funds never reached the institution.

A furious Habba reportedly stormed into the Oval Office earlier this month to confront Trump over Grenell, according to Axios and The New York Times. The president ordered White House counsel to investigate the matter shortly afterward.

“I’ve never asked for one cent to be sent somewhere else pretending it was for the Kennedy Center, and I’ve never received any payment from him,” Grenell told the Times.

He also blasted the accusations as “absurd” in an earlier statement to the Daily Beast.

“Make him give proof to what he is saying, not make these absurd allegations,” he said of Mildon.

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Grenell’s admission that he had not been a special envoy for months comes the week after White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia lasted just five days in the job when it turned out that Trump’s claim she was “an attorney” was untrue, and that she had claimed to be “general counsel” to Grenell’s “election integrity” nonprofit Fixing California, despite having failed the bar.

Making a false claim to be an attorney in California is a minor criminal offense.

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