Robert Mueller

Robert Swan Mueller III was born on August 7, 1944, at Doctors Hospital in Manhattan, New York City, the first child of Alice C. Truesdale (1920 to 2007) and Robert Swan Mueller Jr. (1916 to 2007). His father was a DuPont executive who had served as a U.S. Navy officer in the Atlantic and Mediterranean during the Second World War. He had four younger sisters: Susan, Sandra, Joan and Patricia.

He was of German, English and Scottish descent. His paternal great-grandfather Gustave A. Mueller was a prominent Pittsburgh physician whose father, August C. E. Muller, emigrated from the Prussian province of Pomerania in 1855. On his mother's side he was a great-grandson of 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 and he enrolled at St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire, where he captained the soccer, hockey and lacrosse teams and received the Gordon Medal as the school's top athlete in 1962. One of his lacrosse teammates was future senator and Secretary of State John Kerry.

Mueller attended Princeton University, where he played varsity lacrosse, belonged to University Cottage Club and earned a Bachelor of Arts in politics in 1966 with a senior thesis titled "Acceptance of Jurisdiction in the South West Africa Cases." He received a Master of Arts in international relations from New York University in 1967. After his Marine Corps service he attended the University of Virginia School of Law, where he served on the Virginia Law Review and earned his Juris Doctor in 1973.

Mueller cited the 1967 combat death of his Princeton lacrosse teammate, Marine First Lieutenant David Spencer Hackett, as a reason he joined the military. After a knee injury delayed him a year, he began Marine officer training in 1968, attending Parris Island, Officer Candidate School, Ranger School and Jump School. He later called Ranger School the most valuable because it taught him how he reacted with no sleep and nothing to eat.

In the summer of 1968 he deployed to South Vietnam as a rifle platoon leader with Second Platoon, H Company, 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines, 3rd Marine Division. On December 11, 1968, during Operation Scotland II, he rescued a wounded Marine under enemy fire in an ambush in which half his platoon became casualties, earning the Bronze Star with "V" device. In April 1969 he was wounded in the thigh, recovered and led his platoon until June 1969. He then served as aide-de-camp to Major General William K. Jones, commander of the 3rd Marine Division, before leaving active duty in August 1970 as a captain.

His decorations included the Bronze Star with "V", the Purple Heart, two Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medals with Combat "V", the Combat Action Ribbon, the Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross and the Parachutist Badge.

After law school Mueller worked as a litigator at Pillsbury, Madison and Sutro in San Francisco until 1976. He then spent twelve years in U.S. Attorney offices, first in the Northern District of California, where he became chief of the criminal division, and from 1982 in Boston, where he prosecuted major financial fraud, terrorism, public corruption, narcotics and international money laundering cases and served as acting U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts from 1986 to 1987.

After a period as a partner at the Boston firm Hill and Barlow, he joined the Justice Department in 1989 as an assistant to Attorney General Dick Thornburgh. From 1990 to 1993 he was Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Criminal Division, overseeing the prosecutions of Manuel Noriega and John Gotti and the Pan Am Flight 103 Lockerbie bombing case. He became a white-collar litigation partner at Hale and Dorr in 1993, then returned to public service in 1995 as a senior homicide litigator in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia. He was U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California from 1998 to 2001 and acting Deputy Attorney General in the first months of 2001.

President George W. Bush nominated Mueller on July 5, 2001. His confirmation hearings came days before surgery for prostate cancer, and the Senate confirmed him 98 to 0 on August 2, 2001. He was sworn in on September 4, 2001, one week before the September 11 attacks, and spent his tenure reshaping the FBI around counterterrorism and intelligence.

In March 2004, after White House officials sought a hospitalized Attorney General John Ashcroft's approval to renew a warrantless surveillance program, Mueller and Deputy Attorney General James Comey threatened to resign; President Bush agreed to modify the program. Mueller barred FBI personnel from participating in CIA enhanced interrogations and pushed back on pressure to round up suspects who had not committed crimes.

In 2011 President Obama asked him to remain for two years beyond his ten-year term, and the Senate approved the extension 100 to 0, making him the only director since J. Edgar Hoover to serve longer than ten years. In 2013 he defended NSA surveillance programs before Congress. He was succeeded by James Comey on September 4, 2013.

On May 17, 2017, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Mueller special counsel to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, any links or coordination with the Trump campaign, and related matters. The appointment drew immediate bipartisan praise. His office charged Paul Manafort and Rick Gates in October 2017, secured Michael Flynn's guilty plea for lying to the FBI in December 2017, and in February 2018 indicted 13 Russian individuals and three companies over a propaganda campaign.

Mueller submitted his final report to Attorney General William Barr on March 22, 2019; a redacted version was released on April 18, 2019. It documented systematic Russian interference, did not establish a criminal conspiracy between the campaign and Russia, and declined to reach a conclusion on obstruction of justice. On May 29, 2019, he closed the office and made his only public statement, saying the report was his testimony and that, under long-standing Justice Department policy, a sitting president could not be charged. He testified before the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees on July 24, 2019, sticking closely to the report.

Mueller met Ann Cabell Standish at a high school party when they were both 17. She attended Miss Porter's School and Sarah Lawrence College and 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, and had two daughters, Melissa and Cynthia, one of whom was born with spina bifida, and five grandchildren according to WilmerHale and the Princeton Alumni Weekly.

He was diagnosed with prostate cancer in the fall of 2000 and was treated before taking office at the FBI. Raised Presbyterian, he later became an Episcopalian. He was a registered Republican in Washington, D.C., and was a longtime friend of William Barr; their wives took part in Bible study together.

Mueller spoke often about integrity, candor and humility, and about service in any form. He said that his Marine Corps experience taught him teamwork, sacrifice and discipline, and that as a leader it was critical to ask hard questions, listen and be willing to change course. He opposed the use of coercive interrogation by FBI agents and defended lawyers who represented terrorism detainees. In his 2019 public statement and testimony he stressed that foreign interference in American elections was ongoing and deserved the attention of every American. In a July 2020 Washington Post op-ed he defended his office's work and wrote that Roger Stone remained a convicted felon after his sentence was commuted.

Mueller is remembered as the director who transformed the FBI after 9/11 from a primarily law enforcement agency into one also focused on intelligence and counterterrorism, and as one of the few public officials trusted by presidents of both parties. His special counsel report remains one of the most consequential and debated legal documents in modern American politics. Former President Obama called him one of the finest directors in the history of the FBI, and former President George W. Bush said Bob dedicated his life to public service.

Bronze Star Medal with "V" device and Purple Heart (Vietnam). Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers (1991). Ranger Hall of Fame (2004). Woodrow Wilson Award, Princeton's highest undergraduate alumni honor (2012). Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Law from the University of Virginia (2013). Sylvanus Thayer Award from the U.S. Military Academy (2016). Baker Award from the Intelligence and National Security Alliance (2017).

Mueller's tenure at the FBI is the subject of Garrett Graff's 2011 book The Threat Matrix: Inside Robert Mueller's FBI and the War on Global Terror. The special counsel's Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election was published in book form after its release. He wrote the introduction to Interference: The Inside Story of Trump, Russia, and the Mueller Investigation (2024) by his former deputies Aaron Zebley, James Quarles and Andrew Goldstein. His 2019 testimony was broadcast live nationally and drew just under 13 million viewers according to Nielsen, and Robert De Niro portrayed him on Saturday Night Live during the investigation.

As FBI director, Mueller defended NSA bulk surveillance after the Edward Snowden disclosures and was among officials named in litigation over post-9/11 detention policies; in June 2017 the Supreme Court shielded him, John Ashcroft and other officials from civil liability over post-9/11 detention policies (Ziglar v. Abbasi). Before the Iraq war he told the Senate that Saddam Hussein might supply terrorists with weapons material. As special counsel he was repeatedly attacked by President Trump, who called the inquiry a witch hunt, while some Republican lawmakers alleged a conflict of interest because of his ties to James Comey. Scholars including William G. Howell and Terry M. Moe criticized his decision not to reach a conclusion on obstruction of justice, and observers described his 2019 testimony as hesitant.

In August 2025, after a House committee said it intended to subpoena him in its Jeffrey Epstein inquiry, Mueller's family disclosed that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in the summer of 2021. He died on the night of Friday, March 20, 2026, in Charlottesville, Virginia, at the age of 81. In a statement his family said, "With deep sadness, we are sharing the news that Bob passed away," and asked for privacy. No cause of death was made public. He was buried at Druid Ridge Cemetery in Pikesville, Maryland.

Former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush and senators including Chuck Schumer, Cory Booker and Dick Durbin paid tribute. President Trump posted on Truth Social that he was glad Mueller was dead, a remark condemned by political figures across party lines.