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Bob Mueller’s family has announced with profound sorrow that he passed away on Friday night. They have also requested that their privacy be respected during this difficult time.
Mueller, who became the FBI director just a week before the tragic events of September 11, 2001, embarked on a mission to transform the agency’s focus to address the evolving law enforcement challenges of the 21st century. His leadership spanned 12 years and included working under presidents from both major political parties.
Nominated by President George W. Bush, a Republican, Mueller faced the immediate and daunting task of refocusing the FBI’s priorities. The September 11 attacks shifted the bureau’s emphasis from domestic crime to counter-terrorism, setting an incredibly high bar for success. The expectation was that the agency should thwart nearly all terrorist plots, a challenge that demanded unwavering diligence and resilience.
He was nominated by Republican President George W. Bush.
The cataclysmic event instantaneously switched the bureau’s top priority from solving domestic crime to preventing terrorism, a shift that imposed an almost impossibly difficult standard on Mueller and the rest of the federal government: preventing 99 out of 100 terrorist plots wasn’t good enough.
Later, he was special counsel in the Justice Department’s investigation into whether the Trump campaign illegally coordinated with Russia to sway the outcome of the 2016 presidential race.
Mueller was a patrician Princeton graduate and Vietnam veteran who walked away from a lucrative midcareer job to stay in public service, and his old-school, buttoned-down style made him an anachronism during a social media-saturated era.
Trump posted on social media after the announcement of Mueller’s death: “Robert Mueller just died. Good, I’m glad he’s dead.” The Republican president added, “He can no longer hurt innocent people!”
The FBI did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment.
The FBI Agents Association cited Mueller’s “commitment to public service and to the FBI’s mission“.
A second act as an investigator of a sitting president
The second-longest-serving director in FBI history, behind only J. Edgar Hoover, Mueller held the job until 2013 after agreeing to Democratic President Barack Obama’s request to stay on even after his 10-year term was up.
After several years in private practice, Mueller was asked by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to return to public service as special counsel in the Trump-Russia inquiry.
Mueller’s stern visage and taciturn demeanour matched the seriousness of the mission, as his team spent nearly two years quietly conducting one of the most consequential, yet divisive, investigations in Justice Department history.
He held no news conferences and made no public appearances during the investigation, remaining quiet despite attacks from Trump and his supporters and creating an aura of mystery around his work.
All told, Mueller brought criminal charges against six of the president’s associates, including his campaign chairman and first national security adviser.
His 448-page report released in April 2019 identified substantial contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia but did not allege a criminal conspiracy.
Mueller laid out damaging details about Trump’s efforts to seize control of the investigation, and even shut it down, though he declined to decide whether Trump had broken the law, in part because of department policy barring the indictment of a sitting president.
But, in perhaps the most memorable language of the report, Mueller pointedly noted: “If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the president clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, we are unable to reach that judgment.”
The nebulous conclusion did not deliver the knockout punch to the administration that some Trump opponents had hoped for, nor did it trigger a sustained push by House Democrats to impeach the president – though he was later tried and acquitted on separate allegations related to Ukraine.
The outcome also left room for Attorney General William Barr to insert his own views.
He and his team made their own determination that Trump did not obstruct justice, and he and Mueller privately tangled over a four-page summary letter from Barr that Mueller felt did not adequately capture his report’s damaging conclusion.
Mueller deflated Democrats during a highly anticipated congressional hearing on his report when he offered terse, one-word answers and appeared uncertain in his testimony.
Frequently, he seemed to waver on details of his investigation.
It was hardly the commanding performance many had expected from Mueller, who had a towering reputation in Washington.
Over the next months, Barr made clear his own disagreements with the foundations of the Russia investigation, moving to dismiss a false-statements prosecution that Mueller had brought against former national security adviser Michael Flynn, even though that investigation ended in a guilty plea.
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