Sen. Lind­sey Gra­ham, one of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s clos­est al­lies in Con­gress who trav­eled the globe to ad­vo­cate for a more ag­gres­sive U.S. for­eign pol­i­cy, has died af­ter a “brief and sud­den ill­ness,” his of­fice said. He was 71.

The state­ment post­ed on so­cial me­dia late Sat­ur­day did not pro­vide any ad­di­tion­al de­tails about the South Car­oli­na Re­pub­li­can, a for­mer Air Force lawyer, and said his fam­i­ly “ap­pre­ci­ates prayers at this time and asks for pri­va­cy dur­ing this in­cred­i­bly dif­fi­cult pe­ri­od.”

“Sen­a­tor Lind­sey Gra­ham, one of the great­est peo­ple and Sen­a­tors I have ever known, is dead!” Trump post­ed on so­cial me­dia ear­ly Sun­day. “He was al­ways work­ing, and was a true Amer­i­can Pa­tri­ot. Lind­sey will be great­ly missed!!! DE­TAILS AND ARRANGE­MENTS TO FOL­LOW. So sad!”