For Romania’s progressives, meeting an American ambassador now warrants a treason referral. Last weekend, a lawmaker from USR, a party that governed alongside former Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan, asked prosecutors to investigate three politicians for treason. Two of them had met Kimberly Guilfoyle, America’s ambassador to Greece, at a Bucharest restaurant on March 31: Sorin Grindeanu, the Social Democratic leader and speaker of the lower house, and the energy minister at the time. The foreign power in this treason story is Romania’s most important ally.

The referral followed a Wall Street Journal report that at an Athens dinner in March, as Bolojan’s government teetered, Guilfoyle remarked: “We can do that to any country we want. We can do that here.” Her lawyer disputes the account, and Athens says no threat was ever raised. Taken at face value, the line was an off-the-cuff remark in the heat of an argument, and such remarks by American envoys carry a price, paid in places like Bucharest, where they are turned against the alliance itself.