Robert Mueller, former FBI director and special counsel in Trump-Russia probe, dies
CNN
By Marshall Cohen, Kaanita Iyer, Evan Perez, CNN
(CNN) — Robert Mueller, the former FBI director who led the historic probe into alleged collusion between Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and the Russian government, has died. He was 81.
“With deep sadness, we are sharing the news that Bob passed away last night,” his family said in a statement Saturday. “His family asks that their privacy be respected.”
His family announced last August that he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2021.
For years, Mueller was highly trusted on both sides of the aisle: When he was selected as FBI director by President George W. Bush just days before September 11, 2001, he was unanimously approved, and earned full support again when he was asked to stay past his 10-year tenure by President Barack Obama. He served in the role for 12 years, becoming the longest-serving FBI director since J. Edgar Hoover.
His reputation for integrity was a key factor in his selection to handle the politically sensitive investigation into Trump. But by the time the investigation concluded in the middle of Trump’s first presidency, views of Mueller, as was the case with so much else in the American political landscape, were largely divided along party lines.
Ultimately, the investigation into Trump produced mixed results. Investigators uncovered dozens of secret and often high-level contacts between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, despite both sides denying there were any. The probe also highlighted how Trump eagerly capitalized on the Kremlin’s election-meddling and that his campaign “expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts.”
However, Mueller did not establish that the Trump campaign conspired with Russia. He also made the controversial decision not to charge Trump with obstruction even though he had the evidence he needed, saying he was prohibited from even considering it because Trump was the sitting president at the time.
Mueller was hit with relentless — and unfounded — allegations of leading a politically biased investigation, dubbed a “witch hunt” by Trump, which tanked his pristine reputation of being highly regarded by both parties.
Mueller’s highly consequential decision to largely let the 448-page report speak for itself, instead of thoroughly explaining his conclusions to the American public, meant that his findings were drowned out by the near-constant stream of lies and conspiracy theories from Trump and the president’s allies.
“Robert Mueller just died. Good, I’m glad he’s dead,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Saturday. “He can no longer hurt innocent people!”
The fallout from his probe lives on. Under Trump, a special counsel was appointed to look for wrongdoing within the Russia investigation itself, and that probe ran from 2019 until 2023. It remained a key issue on the 2024 campaign trail, where Trump regularly attacked what he called the “Russia hoax.”
Reflecting on his career in a 2021 MSNBC podcast, Mueller said, “Each person must determine in what way they can best serve others in a way that will leave them believing that their time has been time well spent.”
“I’ve ended up being able to spend some time in the government and private practice, as well as in various institutions, and I’ve come to believe that it really does not matter which way you choose to serve,” he said. “The only thing that we ask is that you work for your country, for your community.”
Andrew Goldstein, a deputy to Mueller in the special counsel’s office, said to CNN on Saturday, “I can say on my behalf that Bob was an extraordinary person and leader whose dedication to justice and the rule of law should serve as an example to all of us, particularly in the most challenging of times.”
Rising through the ranks at the Justice Department
Mueller was born in New York City in 1944 as the country was embroiled in World War II.
He went on to earn his undergraduate degree from Princeton University in 1966 and joined the Marines the same year. He fought in the Vietnam War and was awarded a Bronze Star, a Purple Heart, the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry and two Navy Commendation Medals.
Mueller also earned a master’s degree from New York University, before obtaining a law degree from the University of Virginia.
Following law school, Mueller joined a law firm in California as an associate attorney before joining the US attorney’s office in the Northern District of California in 1976.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Mueller oscillated between jobs at law firms and the Justice Department. In 1982, Mueller became an assistant US attorney in Massachusetts. Following a stint as a partner at a Boston law firm, Mueller returned to public service, working his way up to becoming the assistant attorney general for the criminal division at the DOJ in 1990.
During his time at the criminal division, Mueller oversaw several high-profile prosecutions, including the convictions of Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega and New York mobster John Gotti.
But those around him described the Lockerbie bombing investigation as the case that had the biggest impact on Mueller.
In December 1988, a Pan Am flight traveling from London to New York was destroyed by a bomb over the town of Lockerbie, Scotland, leaving 270 people dead. Mueller led the investigation into the attack and brought charges against two men — one of whom was later acquitted — for making the bomb. Mueller’s former chief of staff told CNN in 2019 that even after the trial, he attended the annual memorial service for Lockerbie victims for several years.
Following the criminal division — where he also oversaw the creation of the agency’s first cyber-dedicated unit — Mueller went on to become a senior partner at a law firm in Virginia before returning to the DOJ to join the homicide section of the US attorney’s office in Washington, DC.
Mueller returned to the Golden State in 1998 to become the US attorney for the Northern District of California.
Leading the FBI in a post-9/11 world
Mueller was sworn in as FBI director in September 2001. A week into his tenure, he was thrust into shifting the department’s focus from domestic crimes to anti-terrorism efforts in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Mueller was a key leader on post-9/11 security policy and received unprecedented domestic authority through the controversial Patriot Act signed into law by Bush. The law was used to justify the secret collection of millions of Americans’ private communication data and to expand the federal government’s use of no-fly lists, measures that have been criticized for disproportionately targeting Arab and Muslim Americans.
The director dismissed concerns that the surveillance practices infringed on Americans’ privacy, and in his final days as FBI director, he told CNN that the exchange of information between the CIA, FBI, National Security Agency and other agencies is “understandable and absolutely necessary if you want to protect the security of the United States.”
Mueller told CNN that “there’s a good chance” the surveillance programs could have “prevented at least a part of 9/11” had they been in place prior.
However, such measures could not prevent the devastating Boston Marathon bombing in April 2013, drawing further scrutiny into their effectiveness.
Mueller admitted to a congressional panel that despite one of the suspects, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, being placed on a low-level watch list that alerted US Customs and Border Protection of his travel, no action was taken in response to his travel more than a year before the bombing to Russia, during which he reportedly met with Islamic militants, according to The Washington Post.
Mueller closed out his tenure by attempting another department overhaul and called for the agency to prioritize cyber threats, which he predicted would surpass terrorism as “the No. 1 threat to our country.”
Mueller stepped down as FBI director in September 2013.
Trump-Russia investigation findings
In May 2017, Mueller was appointed special counsel to oversee the investigation into potential collusion between Trump’s campaign associates and Russia. After years of investigation, Mueller’s 448-page report was released in April 2019, concluding that investigators did not establish that the Trump campaign conspired with Russia.
However, the report included significant findings that eviscerated Trump’s public denials of any contacts between his campaign and Russia.
Mueller discovered that two senior Trump campaign officials, Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, shared internal campaign polling with a Russian spy they knew from previous business dealings in Ukraine. The Biden administration confirmed in 2021 that the agent passed data along to Russia’s intelligence services, which were actively meddling in the campaign to help Trump win.
The report, along with the subsequent trial of informal Trump adviser Roger Stone, also revealed that the campaign welcomed the release of stolen emails and documents damaging to Hillary Clinton by WikiLeaks and saw Stone as an access point to the leaks, which they didn’t hesitate to use.
Mueller further discovered that Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr., son-in-law Jared Kushner and Manafort eagerly met with a Kremlin-connected lawyer at Trump Tower in June 2016 and expected the meeting to deliver damaging information on Clinton, though it didn’t pan out.
The investigation also revealed that Trump’s company pursued a deal for Trump Tower Moscow while campaigning for president in 2016 — and that the talks included some senior Kremlin officials — even though he repeatedly claimed he had no business activities in Russia.
Overall, the report documented at least 77 specific instances where Trump’s campaign staff, administration officials and family members, Republican backers and his associates lied or made false assertions (sometimes unintentionally) to the public, Congress or authorities, according to a CNN analysis at the time.
Ultimately, charges were brought against 37 people and entities, and seven people were sentenced to prison, including Stone and Manafort, who were later pardoned by Trump. In all, Mueller secured convictions against six Trump 2016 campaign associates: Stone, Manafort, Gates, Michael Flynn, Michael Cohen and George Papadopoulos.
In his report, Mueller said Russian spy agencies were responsible for the hack-and-leak operations against Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee, which rocked the 2016 campaign with public releases of embarrassing and damaging internal emails. Mueller also confirmed that Russian hackers compromised local election systems of two Florida counties in 2016.
But the findings of the report were drowned out by attacks from the former president and his allies. Mueller chose to largely remain silent, giving then-Attorney General William Barr the opportunity to twist the report to make it look better for his boss and allowing the former president to ramp up his criticism with widely debunked lies about the investigation.
Trump and his allies also attempted to paint the picture that Mueller’s decision to not bring charges against the president exonerated him, even though Mueller explicitly said the opposite was true.
In a rare public statement, Mueller made it clear that he was constrained by Justice Department guidelines against indicting a president, and he signaled that his obstruction investigation into Trump could be picked up by Congress.
“If we had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so,” Mueller said. “We did not, however, make a determination as to whether the president did commit a crime.”
A few months later, Mueller reluctantly testified to Congress in July 2019, during which he came across as shaky and defeated, further allowing his findings to be muffled.
Mueller let Republicans speak over him and sometimes stood down when given opportunities to fight back.
Two sources close to Mueller told CNN at the time that he wanted to keep his answers as close to the report as possible. But the congressional hearing made it clear that a by-the-book approach would be no match to the intensifying attempts to discredit the work of the DOJ.
In the years since, Trump and his allies have strengthened the rhetoric used around the Mueller investigation to sow distrust in the Justice Department.
But in the divisive exchange, what was perhaps lost during Mueller’s testimony were his warnings of future election interferences from Russia and other countries.
“I hope this is not the new normal,” Mueller told Congress. “But I fear it is.”
This story has been updated with additional information.
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CNN’s Katelyn Polantz contributed to this report.
