page_title: Richard Grenell
section_title: Ambassador to Germany
hierarchical_section_title: Richard Grenell / Career / Ambassador to Germany
caption_attribution_description: Ambassador RichardGrenell met today with Berlin Governing Mayor Michael Müller
context_page_description: Richard Allen Grenell is an American diplomat, political advisor, and media consultant. A member of the Republican Party, he served as the U.S. Ambassador to Germany from 2018 to 2020 and briefly as Acting Director of National Intelligence in the Trump Cabinet in 2020. Grenell further serves as the Special Presidential Envoy for Serbia and Kosovo Peace Negotiations.
  Grenell served as a U.S. State Department spokesperson to the United Nations under four different U.S. ambassadors during the George W. Bush administration. Following his State Department tenure, he formed Capitol Media Partners, an international strategic media and public affairs consultancy; he also worked as a Fox News contributor. Grenell was a foreign policy spokesperson for Mitt Romney during his 2012 presidential campaign.
  In September 2017, President Donald Trump nominated Grenell as the U.S. Ambassador to Germany. On April 26, 2018, he was confirmed by the United States Senate by a vote of 56 to 42. Grenell presented his credentials to the President of Germany, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, on May 8, 2018. His tenure was controversial in Germany.
context_section_description: In September 2017, President Donald Trump nominated Grenell to become the United States Ambassador to Germany. After a significant delay, the Senate confirmed Grenell 56–42 on April 26, 2018. Grenell was sworn in by Vice President Mike Pence on May 3, 2018, making him the highest-ranking openly gay official ever in a Republican administration. Grenell was also under consideration for the posts of U.S. Ambassador to NATO and United States Ambassador to the United Nations.
  Grenell presented his credentials to the President of Germany on May 8, 2018. Within hours of taking office, Grenell offended diplomats and business leaders when he tweeted that “German companies doing business in Iran should wind down operations immediately.” The tweet was widely perceived as a threat, with the Foreign Minister of Luxembourg, Jean Asselborn, commenting that "This man was accredited as ambassador only yesterday. To give German businesses such orders … that’s just not how you can treat your allies.” The leader of Germany's Social Democratic Party stated that Grenell "does appear to need some tutoring" in the "fine art of diplomacy", while the Left Party urged the Merkel government to summon Grenell to explain his comments.
  Grenell stirred controversy in June 2018 by telling Breitbart News, "I absolutely want to empower other conservatives throughout Europe, other leaders." This comment was described as a breach of diplomatic protocol and a breach of Article 14 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which requires ambassadors to be politically neutral in the domestic politics of the countries where they serve. Prominent German politicians called for Grenell's dismissal. Martin Schulz, former leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, said, "What this man is doing is unheard of in international diplomacy. If a German ambassador were to say in Washington that he is there to boost the Democrats, he would have been kicked out immediately."
  In the fall of 2018, Grenell played a key diplomatic role in planning the arrest of Julian Assange by providing backchannel assurances to Ecuador that Assange would not face the death penalty in the United States.
  Grenell was a regular contributor on Fox News's Tucker Carlson Tonight during the first few months of his ambassadorship in Germany. In November 2018, he appeared on the show and repeated his criticism of Angela Merkel's immigration policies. Grenell compared Merkel unfavorably to the recently elected Chancellor of Austria Sebastian Kurz, who (according to Grenell) "won in a very big way" because of his strict stance on immigration. The magazine Der Spiegel called these remarks a "thinly veiled call for a change of government in Berlin".
  In December 2018, during the affair surrounding Der Spiegel journalist Claas Relotius, Grenell wrote to the magazine, complained about an anti-American institutional bias, and asked for an independent investigation.
  In January 2019, Grenell told Handelsblatt that European companies participating in the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline are "always in danger, because sanctions are always possible". The Trump administration has long opposed the Russian-backed Nord Stream 2, a pipeline for delivering natural gas from Russia to Germany. Grenell also threatened to sanction German companies involved in the construction of the Nord Stream 2.
  Der Spiegel published a profile of Grenell on January 11, 2019, using interviews with 30 “American and German diplomats, cabinet members, lawmakers, high-ranking officials, lobbyists and think tank experts". The magazine wrote that "almost all of these sources paint an unflattering portrait of the ambassador, one remarkably similar to Donald Trump, the man who sent him to Berlin. A majority of them describe Grenell as a vain, narcissistic person who dishes out aggressively, but can barely handle criticism." The profile claimed that Grenell was politically isolated in Berlin because of his association with the far-right Alternative for Germany Party, causing the leaders of the mainstream German parties—in
caption: Grenell (left) with Berlin Governing Mayor Michael Müller in 2018
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "200", "Image YResolution": "200", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Digital Photo Professional", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "142", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "200", "Thumbnail YResolution": "200", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "380", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "7764", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "4516", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "3011", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "Interoperability RelatedImageWidth": "4516", "Interoperability RelatedImageLength": "3011", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "232"}