{"id":170807,"date":"2026-03-21T17:58:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T17:58:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/170807\/"},"modified":"2026-03-21T17:58:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T17:58:10","slug":"former-fbi-director-robert-mueller-dies-at-81-nbc-new-york","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/170807\/","title":{"rendered":"Former FBI Director Robert Mueller dies at 81 \u2013 NBC New York"},"content":{"rendered":"

Robert S. Mueller III, the FBI director who transformed the nation’s premier law enforcement agency into a terrorism-fighting force after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and who later became special counsel in charge of investigating ties between Russia and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, has died. He was 81.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith deep sadness, we are sharing the news that Bob passed away\u201d on Friday night, his family said in a statement Saturday. \u201cHis family asks that their privacy be respected.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the FBI, Mueller set about almost immediately overhauling the bureau\u2019s mission to meet the law enforcement needs of the 21st century, beginning his 12-year tenure just one week before the Sept. 11 attacks and serving across presidents of both political parties. He was nominated by Republican President George W. Bush.<\/p>\n

The cataclysmic event instantaneously switched the bureau\u2019s top priority from solving domestic crime to preventing terrorism, a shift that imposed an almost impossibly difficult standard on Mueller and the rest of the federal government: preventing 99 out of 100 terrorist plots wasn\u2019t good enough.<\/p>\n

Later, he was special counsel in the Justice Department\u2019s investigation into whether the Trump campaign illegally coordinated with Russia to sway the outcome of the 2016 presidential race.<\/p>\n

\"<\/p>\n

Trump posted on social media about Mueller\u2019s death<\/a>: \u201cRobert Mueller just died. Good, I\u2019m glad he\u2019s dead.\u201d The Republican president added, \u201cHe can no longer hurt innocent people!\u201d<\/p>\n

The FBI did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Robert S. Mueller III, the FBI director who transformed the nation’s premier law enforcement agency into a terrorism-fighting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":170808,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[36603,9,24,55,54,56],"class_list":["post-170807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-in-memoriam","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170807\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}