The former head of the FBI who investigated ties between Russia and Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign has died aged 81.
Robert Mueller, who ran the US crime investigation body from 2001 to 2013, died on Friday evening, a spokesperson for his family said.
His cause of death has not been released publicly.
In a statement, a spokesperson for his family said: ‘With deep sadness, we are sharing the news that Bob passed away. His family asks that their privacy be respected.’
During his time at the FBI, Mueller set about overhauling the bureau’s mission to meet the law enforcement needs of the 21st century after taking office just days before the September 11 attacks.
The cataclysmic event instantly switched the bureau’s top priority from solving domestic crime to preventing terrorism, a shift that imposed an almost impossible standard on Mueller and the rest of the federal government: preventing 99 out of 100 terrorist plots was not good enough.
Later, he was special counsel in the Justice Department’s investigation into whether the Trump campaign illegally co-ordinated with Russia to sway the outcome of the 2016 presidential race.
As 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 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.
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, despite attacks from Trump and his supporters.
Mueller later 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.
He 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.
Mueller 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 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 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, who said Trump did not obstruct justice.
Trump posted on social media: ‘Robert Mueller just died. Good, I’m glad he’s dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people!’
During his time at the FBI, it was defined by the 9/11 attacks and its aftermath, as an FBI granted broad new surveillance and national security powers scrambled to confront an ascendant al-Qaida and interrupt plots and take terrorists off the street before they could act.
It was a new model of policing for an FBI that had long been accustomed to investigating crimes that had already occurred.
Mueller was born in New York City and grew up in a well-to-do suburb of Philadelphia.
He received a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University and a master’s in international relations from New York University.
He then joined the marines, serving for three years as an officer during the Vietnam War.
He led a rifle platoon and was awarded a Bronze Star, Purple Heart and two Navy Commendation Medals. After his military service, he earned a law degree from the University of Virginia.
Mueller became a federal prosecutor and rose quickly through the ranks in US attorneys’ offices in San Francisco and Boston from 1976 to 1988. Later, as head of the Justice Department’s criminal division in Washington, he oversaw a range of high-profile prosecutions that chalked up victories against targets as varied as Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega and New York crime boss John Gotti.
In a mid-career switch that shocked colleagues, Mueller quit a job at a prestigious Boston law firm to join the homicide division of the US attorney’s office in the nation’s capital, where he immersed himself as a senior litigator on unsolved drug-related murders in a city rife with violence.
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