Robert Mueller

• 1. Introduction

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  Robert Mueller was the sixth director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The Senate confirmed him on the 2nd of August 2001, by a vote of 98-0. Not one senator opposed him.

  That kind of agreement was no accident of timing. Four presidents appointed or reappointed Mueller to positions that needed Senate confirmation: George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. He was a registered Republican in Washington, D.C., yet Democrats trusted him as readily as Republicans did.

  How does a platoon leader from the Marine Corps become the person two parties both reach for? What did he refuse to do when the White House pressed him? And why did the most famous work of his life end with so few words spoken aloud? The answers begin in a Manhattan hospital in 1944.

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• 2. Lacrosse Fields

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  Robert Swan Mueller III was born on the 7th of August 1944 at Doctors Hospital in Manhattan. He was the first of five children, with four younger sisters named Susan, Sandra, Joan, and Patricia. His father, Robert Mueller Jr., worked as an executive at DuPont after serving as a Navy officer in the Atlantic and Mediterranean during World War II. His mother was Alice Truesdale.

  His family tree ran through Pittsburgh and Pomerania. A great-grandfather, Gustave A. Mueller, was a prominent physician in Pittsburgh, and Gustave's father, August, had emigrated from Pomerania in Prussia in 1855. On his mother's side, Mueller was a great-grandson of the railroad executive William Truesdale.

  Mueller grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, and attended Princeton Country Day School. After eighth grade his family moved to Philadelphia, but he enrolled at St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire. There he captained the soccer, hockey, and lacrosse teams. In 1962 he received the Gordon Medal as the school's top athlete. One of his lacrosse teammates was John Kerry, who later became a Massachusetts senator and Secretary of State.

  Princeton University came next, and so did more lacrosse. Mueller earned a Bachelor of Arts in Politics in 1966, writing a senior thesis titled "Acceptance of Jurisdiction in the South West Africa Cases." A year later he finished a Master of Arts in International Relations at New York University.

  His private life began to take shape at the same time. At a high school party when both were seventeen, he met Ann Cabell Standish, who attended Miss Porter's School and Sarah Lawrence College. She later worked as a special-education teacher for children with learning disabilities. They married in September 1966 at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in Sewickley, Pennsylvania. The couple had two daughters and three grandchildren, and one daughter was born with spina bifida.

  A friend from the Princeton lacrosse field was about to change the direction of his life.

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• 3. Platoon Leader

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  Mueller later explained why he joined the Marine Corps, and he pointed to a lacrosse teammate. David Spencer Hackett, a Marine first lieutenant in the infantry, was killed by small arms fire in Quảng Trị province in 1967. Mueller said, "One of the reasons I went into the Marine Corps was because we lost a very good friend, a Marine in Vietnam, who was a year ahead of me at Princeton."

  A knee injury delayed him by a year. In 1968 he was accepted for officer training and went through Parris Island, Officer Candidate School, Ranger School, and Jump School. He ranked Ranger School highest, because it "more than anything teaches you about how you react with no sleep and nothing to eat."

  That summer he deployed to South Vietnam as a rifle platoon leader. His unit was Second Platoon, H Company, 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines, part of the 3rd Marine Division. On the 11th of December 1968, during Operation Scotland II, his platoon was ambushed and half of it became casualties. Mueller rescued a wounded Marine under enemy fire and earned the Bronze Star with "V" device for combat valor.

  In April 1969 enemy gunfire wounded him in the thigh. He recovered and returned to lead his platoon until June. His decorations also included the Purple Heart, two Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medals with Combat "V", the Combat Action Ribbon, the Vietnam Service Medal with four service stars, the Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross, and the Parachutist Badge.

  After recovering at a field hospital near Da Nang, Mueller became aide-de-camp to Major General William K. Jones, commander of the 3rd Marine Division. He had once considered a career in the Corps. Life outside combat proved unexciting, he said, so he left active duty in August 1970 as a captain, after a short posting at Henderson Hall.

  He spoke about the war with plain gratitude. "I consider myself exceptionally lucky to have made it out of Vietnam," he said, and he added that he had "always felt compelled to contribute." In 2009 he told a writer that he remained "most proud the Marine Corps deemed me worthy of leading other Marines."

  Law school followed at the University of Virginia, where he served on the Virginia Law Review and earned his Juris Doctor in 1973.

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• 4. The Prosecutor's Ladder

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  Pillsbury, Madison and Sutro, a San Francisco firm, gave Mueller his first job after law school. He worked there as a litigator until 1976. Then he spent twelve years in U.S. Attorney offices, starting in San Francisco with the Northern District of California, where he rose to chief of the criminal division.

  In 1982 Mueller moved to Boston as an Assistant United States Attorney for Massachusetts. His caseload there ran from major financial fraud and public corruption to terrorism, narcotics conspiracies, and international money-laundering operations. He later became a partner at the Boston firm Hill and Barlow.

  In 1989 he returned to the Department of Justice as an assistant to Attorney General Dick Thornburgh and as acting deputy attorney general. James Baker, who worked with him on national security matters, said Mueller had "an appreciation for the Constitution and the rule of law."

  The following year, 1990, Mueller took charge of the department's Criminal Division as Assistant Attorney General. During his tenure, the division handled the prosecutions of Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega, the Pan Am Flight 103 case over the Lockerbie bombing, and Gambino crime family boss John Gotti.

  In 1991 he did something unusual for an ongoing case. He publicly stated that the government had been investigating the Bank of Credit and Commerce International since 1986. That year he was also elected a fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers.

  Private practice drew him back in 1993, when he became a partner at Hale and Dorr and specialized in white-collar crime litigation. In 1995 he returned to public service as a senior litigator in the homicide section of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia. In 1998 he was appointed U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California, a post he held until 2001.

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• 5. Director in Wartime

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  On the 5th of July 2001, President George W. Bush nominated Mueller to lead the FBI. Two other candidates had been considered: the Washington lawyer George J. Terwilliger III and Dan Webb, a Chicago prosecutor and white-collar defense lawyer. Both withdrew in mid-June. Mueller, described at the time as a conservative Republican, was widely seen as the front-runner.

  His health complicated the schedule. Doctors had diagnosed prostate cancer in the fall of 2000, and his Senate Judiciary hearing on the 30th of July came just three days before surgery. He postponed being sworn in until his physician gave a favorable prognosis. He took office on the 4th of September 2001, one week before the September 11 attacks.

  On the 11th of February 2003, one month before the invasion of Iraq, Mueller testified to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. He named seven state sponsors of terrorism, including Iran, Iraq, and Syria. He said the bureau was particularly concerned that Saddam Hussein might supply terrorists with biological, chemical, or radiological material. That same month, FBI Special Agent Coleen Rowley sent him an open letter. She warned that an attack on Iraq could bring a flood of terrorism the bureau might not be able to stem.

  Mueller drew his own lines on interrogation. He barred FBI personnel from taking part in enhanced interrogations conducted by the CIA. At a dinner he defended Thomas Wilner, an attorney criticized for representing Kuwaiti detainees, by raising a glass and saying, "I toast Tom Wilner. He's doing what an American should."

  The White House wanted more aggressive methods. When Bush pressed him to round up more suspects inside the country, Mueller answered, "If they don't commit a crime, it would be difficult to identify and isolate them." Vice President Dick Cheney objected: "That's just not good enough. We're hearing this too much from the FBI."

  The sharpest confrontation came on the 10th of March 2004. Attorney General John Ashcroft was in the hospital for gallbladder surgery. Deputy Attorney General James Comey got a call from Ashcroft's wife saying that White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card and Counsel Alberto Gonzales were on their way to his bedside. They wanted him to approve renewing a warrantless wiretapping program under the Terrorist Surveillance Program, which the Justice Department had ruled unconstitutional.

  Ashcroft refused to sign. The next day the White House renewed the program anyway, and Mueller and Comey threatened to resign. On the 12th of March, after private meetings with the two men at the White House, the president agreed to modify the program to address their concerns.

  That same year, the Ranger Hall of Fame inducted Mueller.

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• 6. Extra Years, New Work

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  In May 2011 President Barack Obama asked Mueller to stay on for two years beyond his ten-year term, which would have expired on the 4th of September 2011. The Senate approved the request 100-0 on the 27th of July 2011. Since the death of J. Edgar Hoover in 1972, Mueller was the only director Congress allowed to serve past the statutory limit.

  On the 4th of September 2013, James Comey succeeded him. Three months earlier, in June 2013, Mueller had defended NSA surveillance programs before the House Judiciary Committee. He said they might have "derailed" the September 11 attacks. Congressman John Conyers answered, "I am not persuaded that that makes it OK to collect every call." Mueller also said the government was taking all necessary steps to hold Edward Snowden responsible for the disclosures.

  Years later, on the 19th of June 2017, the Supreme Court ruled in Arar v. Ashcroft. Mueller, Ashcroft, former Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner James W. Ziglar, and others were shielded from civil liability over the post-9/11 detention of Muslims.

  After the FBI, Mueller spent a year at Stanford University as a consulting professor and the Arthur and Frank Payne distinguished lecturer, focusing on computer security. In 2014 he became a partner in the Washington office of the law firm WilmerHale. There he oversaw the independent investigation into the NFL's conduct surrounding the video that appeared to show player Ray Rice assaulting his fiancée.

  Other assignments followed. In January 2016 he became Settlement Master in consumer litigation over the Volkswagen emissions scandal, which by the 11th of May 2017 had produced $11.2 billion in customer settlements. On the 19th of October 2016 he began an external review of security and management practices at the contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, after Harold T. Martin III was indicted for massive data theft from the National Security Agency.

  On the 6th of April 2017 he was named special master for distributing $850 million to automakers and $125 million to consumers affected by rupture-prone Takata airbags. He also received the 2016 Sylvanus Thayer Award from the U.S. Military Academy and, in June 2017, the Baker Award for intelligence and national security contributions.

  Just over a month after the Takata appointment, a meeting with the president would pull him in a new direction.

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• 7. The Special Counsel

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  On the 16th of May 2017, Mueller met with President Donald Trump as a courtesy, to offer perspectives on the FBI and on hiring a new director. Early reports called it an interview for the job. Trump raised the possibility of Mueller returning, but term limits barred it, and Mueller had no interest.

  The next day Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed him special counsel. His assignment covered "any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump." Support in Congress came quickly from both parties. Newt Gingrich called him "a superb choice to be special counsel." Senator Chuck Schumer said the investigation would now follow the facts wherever they lead.

  Not everyone agreed. Representative Trent Franks argued that Mueller was compromised by his closeness to James Comey. On the 23rd of May 2017, Justice Department ethics officials declared Mueller ethically able to serve. He, Aaron Zebley, and James L. Quarles III, who had served on the Watergate Special Prosecution Force, resigned from WilmerHale to take up the work.

  Pressure on the office built through 2017. On the 14th of June, The Washington Post reported that Mueller was also examining whether Trump had obstructed justice. Trump allegedly ordered Mueller fired that month but backed down when White House Counsel Don McGahn threatened to resign. At the Aspen security conference on the 21st of July, former CIA director John Brennan urged Congress to resist if Trump tried to fire him. On the 20th of December, Senator Mark Warner warned of a possible constitutional crisis.

  The charges began on the 30th of October 2017. Mueller indicted former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and co-chairman Rick Gates on 12 counts, including conspiracy to launder money and violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. On the 1st of December, former national security adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to giving false testimony to the FBI about his contacts with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

  On the 16th of February 2018, Mueller indicted 13 Russian individuals and 3 Russian companies. The charges described an effort to deceive Americans with Russian propaganda that targeted Hillary Clinton and later Donald Trump. Four days later, attorney Alex van der Zwaan was charged with making false statements.

  On the 20th of May 2018, Trump tweeted that "the World's most expensive Witch Hunt has found nothing on Russia & me." Mueller's reach kept widening, to an August 2016 meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and an emissary for the crown princes of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and to possible campaign ties to Turkey, Qatar, Israel, and China. In December 2018, The Washington Post reported on a Senate-commissioned study concluding that Russian disinformation teams had targeted Mueller himself.

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• 8. The Report and After

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  On the 22nd of March 2019, Mueller submitted his final report to Attorney General William Barr. A senior Justice Department official said it recommended no new indictments. Barr and Mueller had known each other since the 1980s and were described as close friends. Mueller attended the weddings of two of Barr's daughters, and their wives joined in Bible study together.

  Two days later Barr told Congress that the investigation had not found that the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with Russia. On obstruction, Barr quoted Mueller: "while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him." The Justice Department released the full report on the 18th of April.

  On the 29th of May 2019, Mueller announced that he was retiring and that the office would close. It was the first time he had spoken publicly about the report. "The report is my testimony," he said, signaling that he had nothing to add. He explained that under long-standing department policy, a president cannot be charged with a crime while in office. Any wrongdoing, he said, must be addressed by a "process other than the criminal justice system." He also warned that "there were multiple, systematic efforts to interfere in our election," an allegation that "deserves the attention of every American."

  His congressional testimony was first set for the 17th of July 2019, then moved to the 24th and extended by an hour. Representative Jamie Raskin said he would use posters to explain the report. When the day came, Mueller kept to the limits he had set. Many answers were a few words or a single word, and he said he was "not familiar" with Fusion GPS. He rejected both the claim that the inquiry was a "witch hunt" and the claim that it had totally exonerated the president. He warned that foreign interference was ongoing and would likely grow beyond Russia.

  Nielsen counted just under 13 million viewers, well below the 20.4 million for the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, 19.5 million for James Comey, and 15.8 million for Michael Cohen. Analysts partly blamed the July vacation season. Some observers called his testimony unusually hesitant or confusing.

  Critics also challenged his legal choices. Political scientists William G. Howell and Terry M. Moe argued that Mueller refused to draw conclusions on obstruction despite a mountain of incriminating evidence, and in doing so failed in his duty to the public. Defenders of the investigation pointed to his record of charges. In October 2019, Mueller, Quarles, and Zebley returned to WilmerHale. On the 11th of July 2020, Mueller wrote in The Washington Post that Roger Stone "remains a convicted felon, and rightly so" after Trump granted Stone clemency.

  In fall 2021 Mueller co-taught a six-session course at the University of Virginia School of Law, called "The Mueller Report and the Role of the Special Counsel." Three colleagues from the investigation taught with him. In 2024 he wrote the introduction to the book Interference, by Zebley, Quarles, and Andrew Goldstein, all of whom he had recruited.

  In August 2025, his family disclosed that doctors had diagnosed Parkinson's disease in 2021. The announcement came after the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee said it intended to subpoena him in its inquiry into the handling of Jeffrey Epstein investigations. Mueller died on the 20th of March 2026 in Charlottesville, Virginia, at the age of 81.

  Trump posted on Truth Social that he was glad Mueller was dead. Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Cory Booker, and Chuck Schumer praised Mueller and condemned that reaction, while Roger Stone issued statements agreeing with Trump. Two of the presidents who had trusted Mueller with the FBI, Bush and Obama, were among those who spoke in his defense.

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