Robert Mueller

Biography

Robert Mueller was born in New York City in 1944 and grew up in Princeton and Philadelphia. He attended St. Paul's School in New Hampshire, graduated from Princeton University in 1966 and earned a master's degree in international relations at New York University. He then served as a Marine Corps rifle platoon leader in Vietnam, where he was wounded and decorated for valor, before taking a law degree at the University of Virginia in 1973.

After three years in private practice in San Francisco, he spent most of the next two decades as a federal prosecutor in San Francisco, Boston and Washington, interrupted by spells in private firms. As head of the Justice Department's Criminal Division from 1990 to 1993 he oversaw cases including the prosecution of Manuel Noriega and the Lockerbie bombing investigation, and he was U.S. Attorney in San Francisco from 1998.

He became director of the FBI one week before the September 11 attacks and led the bureau for twelve years; at President Obama's request the Senate extended his ten-year term by two years. After a period at Stanford and the law firm WilmerHale, he was appointed special counsel in May 2017 to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election, and submitted his report in 2019. He died in 2026.