A career military public affairs officer has decided to retire, according to the Army, though Secretary of War Pete Hegseth reportedly pushed him out.
Hegseth ordered Army Secretary Dan Driscoll to remove Col. Dave Butler from his current job serving as chief of Army public affairs and chief adviser to Driscoll, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday.
Butler, who had been nominated for promotion to brigadier general, ultimately filed paperwork to retire because his inclusion on a list of promotions was holding up his colleagues’ advancements.
“After 28 years of dedicated service, Col. Dave Butler is immediately transitioning from his position as Chief of Army Public Affairs to retire,” Cynthia O. Smith, Army spokeswoman, told the Washington Examiner. “His integral role in the Army’s transformation efforts will be missed, and we wish him tremendous success.”
The Army did not address the events that led up to Butler filing his retirement paperwork.
Butler previously served as the head of public affairs for the Joint Chiefs of Staff when Gen. Mark Milley was chairman. Hegseth, like President Donald Trump, has publicly rebuked Milley on multiple occasions, stripping him of his security clearance and protective detail. Under Hegseth, the department also ordered a Pentagon inspector general review of his past actions and had Milley’s portrait in the Pentagon taken down.
Milley retired in 2023, but remains a punching bag for Trump and Hegseth, who have sought to revamp the military away from policies that included but were not limited to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, connections with elite universities, and gender equality.
Milley was also chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the U.S. military’s withdrawal from Afghanistan and the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the latter of which Trump and Hegseth have said wouldn’t have happened if Trump had been president.
Shortly after Hegseth was sworn in as secretary, he fired several senior military leaders without explanation, including the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Charles Q. Brown, Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the then-Chief of Naval Operations; Adm. Linda Fagan, then the Coast Guard commandant; Gen. James Slife, the former vice chief of staff of the Air Force; and Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse, who was the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
News of Butler’s retirement comes as Driscoll is overseas, participating in the Russia-Ukraine-United States negotiations on how to end the war. Driscoll was included in a previous round of negotiations last fall, which was a surprise at the time because the top civilian leader of a service branch is not often involved in diplomatic efforts of this nature.
“The president identified and designated the Secretary of the Army as another key representative of the U.S. government to restart peace negotiations to work with the Ukrainians and try to keep moving this stuff forward,” a U.S. official told the Washington Examiner last November about his participation in that round of talks.
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Hegseth has not participated in the Trump administration’s efforts to broker an end to the Russia-Ukraine war.
Driscoll, who is known for his interest in drones and their evolution in warfare, is a college friend of Vice President JD Vance.
