Robert Mueller, the former FBI chief who documented Russia’s interference in the 2016 US election and its contacts with Donald Trump’s campaign, has died aged 81.<\/p>\n
His death was reported by MS NOW and a New York Times journalist who posted a statement attributed to his family.<\/p>\n
No cause of death was given for Mr Mueller, a decorated Vietnam War veteran who led the FBI in the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 attacks on the US.<\/p>\n
The New York Times last year reported that Mr Mueller had Parkinson’s disease.<\/p>\n
Mueller retired after 12 years as Federal Bureau of Investigation director in 2013 but was summoned back to public service by a senior Justice Department official four years later as a special counsel to take over an inquiry into Russia’s election meddling after Mr Trump fired then-FBI chief James Comey.<\/p>\n
Mr Mueller conducted a 22-month investigation that produced indictments against 34 people, including several of Mr Trump’s associates as well as Russian intelligence officers and three Russian companies, and a series of guilty pleas and convictions.<\/p>\n
Mr Mueller ultimately stopped short of a criminal indictment of the Republican president.<\/p>\n
The US president celebrated Mr Mueller’s passing.<\/p>\n
“Good, I’m glad he’s dead,” he wrote on his Truth Social account.<\/p>\n
Adding: “He can no longer hurt innocent people!”<\/p>\n
Mr Mueller’s Russia inquiry, detailed in a 448-page 2019 report, laid bare what he and US intelligence agencies described as a Russian campaign of hacking and propaganda to sow discord in the US, to denigrate 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and boost Mr Trump, the Kremlin’s preferred candidate.<\/p>\n
Russia has denied any election interference.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Robert Mueller, the former FBI chief who documented Russia’s interference in the 2016 US election and its contacts…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":358352,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-358351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=358351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358351\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/358352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}