Trump appoints former Middle East negotiator as hostage affairs envoy 

President-elect Trump on Wednesday announced his selection of Adam Boehler to serve as special presidential envoy for hostage affairs in his second term.

While the position holds the rank of an ambassador, it does not require Senate confirmation. 

Trump, in a post on Truth Social, credited Boehler as a lead negotiator on the Abraham Accords team, the 2020 agreement that established diplomatic relations between Israel, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. 

The president-elect also said Boehler took part in negotiations with the Taliban, with the first Trump administration inking a deal with the designated terrorist group that halted all attacks against U.S. troops in Afghanistan in exchange for a commitment to exit the country. President Biden inherited that deal and extended the deadline for withdrawal but ultimately oversaw a chaotic and deadly exit from the country. 

“Adam knows that NO ONE is tougher than the United States of America, at least when President Trump is its Leader. Adam will work tirelessly to bring our Great American Citizens HOME,” Trump wrote Wednesday.

Between 2019 and 2021, Boehler also served as chief executive officer of the U.S. International Development Finance Corp, a federal agency created during Trump’s first administration. 

Dozens of Americans are known to be held unjustly in at least 16 countries, according to the 2024 report by the Foley Foundation, the advocacy group founded in memory of James Foley, an independent journalist who was kidnapped in Syria in and murdered by ISIS in 2014.

The group found that “substantial progress” was made in securing the release of Americans unjustly detained between 2023 and 2024, but that terrorist hostage taking spiked.

Among Americans still held abroad include seven U.S. citizens, alive and dead, held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip, part of 101 total hostages kidnapped from Israel during the groups Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack. 

In China, the Foley Foundation cited in its report that 11 Americans are wrongfully detained, including those subject to exit bans. Last month, Biden secured the release of three Americans from China in exchange for three Chinese prisoners held in the U.S.