Perhaps it was a somewhat unexpected piece of advice. After A. Lukashenko turned to Kremlin host Vladimir Putin for help in suppressing pro-democracy protests with violence in 2020, the United States government diplomatically isolated the Belarusian leader.
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A. Lukashenko pushed his country into even deeper isolation after, two years later, allowing V. Putin to use Belarusian territory as a springboard for the invasion of Ukraine.
Nevertheless, U.S. diplomat J. Coale decided to try. Last year, armed with sharp jokes and witticisms, he arrived in the Belarusian capital Minsk. As a special envoy in Belarus, he began building relations with A. Lukashenko by telling risqué jokes, sipping vodka, and sharing advice on how to lose weight.
However, their connection became the basis for Belarus releasing 500 political prisoners and granting amnesty to several hundred more. The authoritarian leader also became an unofficial intermediary between the United States and Russia.
In exchange, J. Coale negotiated sanctions relief for A. Lukashenko and even proposed an action plan to normalize Washington-Minsk relations.
“Humor is a powerful weapon,” said 79-year-old J. Coale in a recent interview at a private club in Washington overlooking the White House. “If you can make another person laugh, you are already halfway there and no longer pose a threat.”
Their witty dialogue embodies the personal relationship-based, negotiation approach to diplomacy favored by D. Trump.
The U.S. president often sidelines career diplomats and favors envoys like J. Coale. He is a lawyer with little prior government experience. D. Trump enjoys high-profile prisoner exchanges and hostage release dramas, viewing them as victories that play well into his success narrative, rather than more complex geopolitical conflicts.
J. Coale’s efforts earned the attention of the U.S. president. The diplomat revealed that he and D. Trump discussed expanding his mission to negotiate the release of political prisoners anywhere in the world. The White House declined to comment publicly on these claims.
Meanwhile, critics argue that J. Coale is simply rewarding a corrupt, authoritarian government. Even some Belarusians dislike the easing of sanctions in exchange for the release of political prisoners.
Activists have dubbed the Belarusian judicial system a “conveyor belt,” as when freedom is granted to some political prisoners, others are imprisoned. There are also those who believe that exchanging freedom for sanctions relief “encourages human trafficking.”
J. Coale rejects such accusations. He emphasized that he had two goals in Belarus: to free prisoners and to encourage the government to “join the family of nations.”
Some activists see the mass release of Belarusian prisoners as a credit to J. Coale and the State Department, calling it a rare achievement.
“He is doing tremendous work, not caring that he is seen negotiating with Lukashenko,” said Valery Kovalevski, a former Belarusian diplomat and founder of a prisoner rights group.
Originally from Baltimore, J. Coale gained fame as a lawyer before joining the Trump administration. He represented victims of the world’s largest industrial disaster—the 1984 Bhopal gas leak—and in 1997 signed the first major settlement with tobacco giants worth as much as $386 billion.
He was actively involved in politics, building connections with both Democrats and Republicans. J. Coale himself has mentioned that he was previously a Democrat but concluded that the party had shifted further left than he was comfortable with. His wife, Greta Van Susteren, is a former Fox News host now working at Newsmax.
After D. Trump was blocked from major social networks following the January 6, 2021 Capitol attack, several presidential allies, including the late Senator Lindsey Graham, suggested J. Coale start working with him.
At the president’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, J. Coale laid out his legal strategy, which eventually led companies Meta, YouTube, and X to pay tens of millions of dollars each to settle lawsuits over the freezing of D. Trump’s accounts.
After that, J. Coale had the opportunity to take a position in the Trump administration. Initially deputy envoy to Ukraine, he was later appointed to Belarus.
Belarus, with a population of about 9 million, located between Russia and the European Union, is considered an important “buffer zone” between these two powers. Repression-marked A. Lukashenko was labeled the “last dictator of Europe” by then U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in 2005. The United States has had no ambassador in Minsk since 2008.
Even during D. Trump’s first term, both countries sought cautious cooperation, but these efforts ended after A. Lukashenko violently suppressed protests in 2020.
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After years of this authoritarian’s isolation, career diplomat Christopher W. Smith, credited with renewing Washington-Minsk relations, quietly laid the groundwork for negotiations. The first meeting with J. Coale—the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit Belarus in many years—marked another diplomatic turn for A. Lukashenko.
Twenty minutes into their meeting, the Belarusian leader was already ranting about European leaders trying to isolate him.
“He shouted and cursed at them, then I said, ‘They are a bunch of cowards,’” recalled J. Coale, who actually used a much more vulgar expression.
“I knew he wanted to hear exactly that or something similar to ease the tension,” he added with a smile, explaining that his own view of other European leaders is much more nuanced.
“After that, he loved me,” said the diplomat, known for healthy self-criticism and radiating friendly, unpretentious self-confidence. “But the Europeans did not.”
After berating the European Union, it was time for a drink. J. Coale said he downed two glasses of A. Lukashenko’s personal brand vodka and poured the rest on the floor to stay sober during negotiations.
After a few toasts, the Belarusian leader told J. Coale that he would release not only the U.S. citizen Washington sought to free but also send home another American not previously included in the negotiations, simply because J. Coale liked him.
Later, during a meeting in Minsk in June 2025, A. Lukashenko noted that the U.S. diplomat had lost weight. In turn, J. Coale told him about “Zepbound”—a weight loss injection that helped him shed 18 kilograms.
He was accompanied to that more than six-hour meeting by Keith Kellogg, a retired lieutenant general and Trump’s envoy to Russia and Ukraine. Shortly after, 14 political prisoners were released, including the husband of opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya.
Soon J. Coale and his wife G. Van Susteren were dining with D. Trump, whom they have known personally for decades. After the woman mentioned to the U.S. leader that 14 prisoners had been released following her husband’s last visit to Belarus, D. Trump demanded to speak with A. Lukashenko on the phone.
He called the Belarusian leader a few days later, en route to a meeting with V. Putin in Alaska, expressing hope that one day he could welcome A. Lukashenko to the White House.
Katsiaryna Andrejeva was at the time in a Belarusian penal colony, sewing uniforms for law enforcement officers and performing other hard physical labor. The activist, imprisoned for covering the 2022 protests in Belarus for the Poland-based channel Belsat, watched J. Coale’s visits on state television.
She had already resigned herself to serving two sentences totaling more than eight years in prison. However, as she admitted, J. Coale’s visits gave her a glimmer of hope.
In February, she was transferred to the State Security Service prison in Minsk. After five weeks of psychological pressure, including days spent in a soft-walled isolation cell, masked men put Katsiaryna into a car and told the prisoners to ride quietly with their heads down.
Only when J. Coale, whom the woman had seen on television during forced propaganda sessions, widely opened the prison bus door did she realize she was free.
“You are free!” Katsiaryna recalled the diplomat’s words. He extended his hand to greet her. The activist pulled him closer and hugged him.
J. Coale admitted that the biggest motivation to continue was the reaction of political prisoners when they realized they were free: “I am motivated to open the car doors that transport newly freed prisoners.”
He intends to use his connections to help Russian political prisoners as well. The diplomat said Russian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dmitry Muratov contacted him, asking for help organizing civilian prisoner exchanges between Russia and Ukraine.
Although it would be extremely complicated, J. Coale admitted he has already received commitments from two organizations ready to relocate freed prisoners abroad.
But first, he wants to get the remaining political prisoners out of Belarusian prisons. According to him, another major exchange could happen very soon.
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This article was published in The New York Times.
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