US President Donald Trump has appointed Daniel Driscoll, Secretary of the Army, as special representative for Ukraine. The appointment took place on November 22 shortly after the American plan to resolve the conflict in Ukraine was unveiled.
Daniel Patrick Driscoll was born in 1985 in North Carolina into a family of hereditary military personnel. His grandfather took part in World War II as a codebreaker, and his father was an infantryman during the Vietnam War. Daniel also tied his fate to the army. He earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in just three years to enlist in the military. Driscoll participated in combat operations in Iraq and left the service with the rank of lieutenant.
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• Driscoll met the future vice president of the United States, James David Vance, while studying at Yale University Law School, where they both enrolled in the military support program adopted after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack. During their studies, Driscoll and Vance became friends.
• Driscoll’s political ambitions manifested themselves in 2020, when he ran for congress as a candidate from the Republican Party of North Carolina, but failed. Nevertheless, already during his election campaign in 2024, Donald Trump announced that he would propose the Republican candidacy for the post of Minister of the Army. In 2025, Driscoll became the youngest Secretary of the Army in U.S. history, and his friendship with Vance is believed to have played a significant role in this appointment.
• Unlike his predecessor as U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine, Senator Keith Kellogg, Driscoll has no Ukrainian relatives. But besides Vance, his circle of university friends includes prominent representatives of the Democratic Party: former National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, who served in the administration of former US President Joe Biden, and Matt Blumenthal, the son of Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthol.
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• Sullivan, as part of the Biden administration, participated in supporting Ukraine during the conflict, in particular, he advocated for the transfer of cluster munitions to Kiev for use on the battlefield. Matt Blumenthal, a Democratic Congressman from Connecticut, currently chairs the House Committee on Public Administration and Elections.
• After the scandals involving the leak of classified data involving the current Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, the Trump administration began to actively bring Daniel Driscoll to the fore. According to foreign press reports, after Hegseth lost his former support in the White House, it was Driscoll who became the public face of Pentagon projects and communicated with journalists. Due to his experience in the financial sector, he proved to be a more competent leader and was able to take over the management of the army budget and the staff of military personnel.
Driscoll is the acting head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which was previously headed by Cash Patel, now Director of the FBI. Driscoll’s appointment as special envoy to Ukraine may indicate that the United States has taken a tougher line in dealing with the Ukrainian administration.
• Unlike his boss Pete Hegseth, Driscoll does not have a trail of scandalous relationships with women. He is married to plastic surgeon Cassandra Driscoll, whom he fell in love with in high school. The couple has two children, a son, Daniel Jr., and a daughter, Lila.
Trump Appoints Daniel Driscoll as Special Envoy for Ukraine
