{"id":359021,"date":"2026-03-22T08:26:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-22T08:26:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/359021\/"},"modified":"2026-03-22T08:26:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-22T08:26:07","slug":"robert-mueller-special-counsel-who-investigated-trump-russia-ties-dies-at-81-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/359021\/","title":{"rendered":"Robert Mueller, special counsel who investigated Trump-Russia ties, dies at 81 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Robert Mueller, the former special counsel who investigated links between Donald Trump<\/a> and Moscow<\/a>, has died aged 81.<\/p>\n

A statement from Mueller\u2019s family, relayed by the New York Times on X, said: \u201cWith deep sadness, we are sharing the news that Bob passed away last night. His family asks that their privacy be respected.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mueller was appointed as special counsel in 2017 by then deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein to oversee the federal investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The no-nonsense former FBI chief who documented Russia\u2019s interference in the 2016 US election<\/a> and its contacts with Donald Trump\u2019s campaign but opted not to bring criminal charges against a sitting president. <\/p>\n

No cause of death was given for Mueller, a decorated Vietnam War veteran who led the FBI in the aftermath of the September 11th, 2001 attacks on the \u200cUS.<\/p>\n

The New York Times last year reported that Mueller had Parkinson\u2019s 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\u2019s election meddling after Trump fired then-FBI chief James \u200bComey.<\/p>\n

Mueller conducted a 22-month investigation that produced indictments against 34 people, including several Trump associates as well as Russian intelligence officers and three Russian companies, and a series of guilty pleas and convictions. Mueller ultimately stopped short of a criminal indictment of the Republican president, bitterly disappointing many Democrats.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Trump is stuck and looking for options \u2013 an Irish former US adviser warns this is riskyOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Trump on Saturday celebrated Mueller\u2019s passing. \u201cGood, I\u2019m glad he\u2019s dead,\u201d Trump wrote on the Truth Social site. \u201cHe can no longer hurt innocent people!\u201d<\/p>\n

During his career as a prosecutor and FBI chief, Mueller displayed a patrician manner and sometimes wooden personality \u2013 just about the opposite of the bombastic Trump. He was known by some as \u201cBobby Three Sticks\u201d because of his full name \u2013 Robert Mueller III \u2013 a moniker that belied his formal bearing and \u200bsober approach to law enforcement.<\/p>\n

His Russia inquiry, detailed in a 448-page 2019 report, laid bare what Mueller and US intelligence agencies have described as a Russian campaign of hacking and propaganda to sow discord in the US, denigrate 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and boost Trump, the Kremlin\u2019s preferred candidate. Russia denied election interference.<\/p>\n

\u201cFirst, our investigation found that the Russian Government interfered \u2060in our election in sweeping and systematic fashion,\u201d Mueller said during 2019 congressional testimony.<\/p>\n

\u201cSecond, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired with the Russian Government in its election interference activities. We did not address \u2018collusion,\u2019 which is not \u200ca \u200clegal \u200bterm. Rather, we focused on whether the evidence was sufficient to charge any member of the campaign with taking part in a criminal conspiracy. It was not,\u201d Mueller added.<\/p>\n

In analysing whether Trump had committed the crime of obstruction of justice, Mueller looked at a series of actions. These included Trump\u2019s attempts to have the special counsel fired and to limit the scope of the investigation as well as the president\u2019s efforts to prevent the \u2060public from knowing about a 2016 meeting at Trump Tower in New York between senior Trump campaign officials and Russians. \u200bMueller pointedly did not exonerate the president, as Trump claimed.<\/p>\n

\u201cBased on Justice Department policy and principles of fairness, we decided we would not \u200bmake a determination as to whether the president committed a crime,\u201d Mueller told lawmakers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe president was not exculpated for the acts that he allegedly committed,\u201d Mueller added.<\/p>\n

Mueller was named by the justice department\u2019s number two official, Rod Rosenstein, to take over the Russia investigation.<\/p>\n

The investigation, according to the report, unearthed \u201cnumerous \u200clinks\u201d between the Russian Government and Trump\u2019s campaign and said the president\u2019s team \u201cexpected it would benefit electorally from \u200binformation stolen and released through Russian efforts,\u201d referring to hacked Democratic emails.<\/p>\n

Mueller, a long-time Republican, faced unremitting attacks by Trump and his allies on his integrity as they tried to discredit the investigation and the special counsel himself. Trump used social media, speeches and comments \u2060to news media to assail Mueller, accusing him of running a politically motivated, \u201crigged witch hunt,\u201d going \u201crogue,\u201d surrounding himself with \u201cthugs\u201d \u2060and having conflicts of interest.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s all a big hoax,\u201d Trump said in \u200b2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cAbsolutely, it was not a hoax,\u201d Mueller told the congressional hearing, noting the numerous charges arising from the probe. <\/p>\n

The Democratic-led House of Representatives at the time twice impeached Trump after Mueller had finished his work, though those actions did not grow out of the special counsel\u2019s findings.<\/p>\n

Appointed by Republican president George W. Bush to head the FBI, Mueller took over as its director one week before the September 11th attacks on the US by al Qaeda militants using hijacked planes that killed about 3,000 people. Democratic president Barack Obama later extended Mueller\u2019s appointment. By the time Mueller left the position, his tenure was exceeded only by J Edgar Hoover\u2019s 48-year stint.<\/p>\n

Mueller was credited with transforming the premier US law enforcement agency after Congress and an independent Government commission determined that the FBI and CIA had \u200cfailed to share information before the September 11th attacks that could \u2060have helped prevent them. <\/p>\n

Born into an affluent New York family, Mueller grew up outside of Philadelphia, graduated from Princeton University, earned a master\u2019s degree at New York University and joined the US Marine Corps, serving \u200bas an officer for three years, leading a rifle platoon in Vietnam and receiving honours including the Bronze Star and Purple Heart.<\/p>\n

Mueller then earned a law degree from the University of Virginia \u200band later became a federal prosecutor and headed the Justice Department\u2019s criminal division, supervising cases including prosecution of the crime boss John J Gotti and the probe into the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland, before Bush chose him to lead the FBI.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe really hates the bad guys,\u201d former Massachusetts Governor William Weld, who preceded Mueller as the US attorney in Boston, told the New York Times in 2013.<\/p>\n

Mueller and his wife, Ann, had two daughters. \u2013 Reuters and The Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Robert Mueller, the former special counsel who investigated links between Donald Trump and Moscow, has died aged 81.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":359022,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[969,42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-359021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-donald-trump","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\/359021","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=359021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/359022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}