Former President Donald Trump expressed his satisfaction with the death of Robert Mueller, the previous FBI director, moments after the news broke that Mueller had passed away at the age of 81.
The circumstances surrounding Mueller’s death remain undisclosed, as reported by his family to Michael Schmidt of The New York Times. They confirmed the news on Friday night.
“With deep sadness, we are sharing the news that Bob passed away last night. His family asks that their privacy be respected,” the family announced in a formal statement.
As of now, no further details about the cause of his death have been provided.
Reacting to the news on Saturday, Trump took to Truth Social to express his approval, stating, “Good, I’m glad he’s dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people!”
Trump’s animosity towards Mueller dates back to the investigation led by Mueller into the 2016 election’s Russian interference, which culminated in Trump’s victory.
Trump labeled the investigation a ‘witch hunt’ and frequently attacked Mueller. The former FBI director spent two years investigating, concluding that Russia had interfered with the election to benefit Trump.
Mueller’s team had not charged Trump for the collusion, but said he could not exonerate him either.
Former FBI Director Robert Mueller has died at the age of 81. Mueller died from unknown circumstances on Friday night
President Donald Trump celebrated the news of Mueller’s passing, writing on Truth Social: ‘Good, I’m glad he’s dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people!’
Trump was quick to react to the announcement Mueller died
Trump called the report ‘total bulls**t’ at the time.
His death comes after his family told The Times in September that the former government worker had Parkinson’s Disease.
The revelation came after the House Oversight Committee had requested Mueller appear before them to testify about the government’s investigation into Jeffrey Epstein.
His family told The Times he was not well enough to do so.
A statement at the time said: ‘Bob was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in the summer of 2021. He retired from the practice of law at the end of that year.
‘He taught at his law school alma mater during the fall of both 2021 and 2022, and he retired at the end of 2022. His family asks that his privacy be respected.’
Mueller had been living in a memory care facility.
Last year, Mueller was scheduled to sit with the House Oversight Committee investigators regarding the FBI’s work relating to Jeffrey Epstein.
Mueller served as the sixth director of the FBI from 2001 until 2013
Mueller with his wife Ann Cabell Standish in 2019
The committee was seeking information Mueller may know about Epstein from overseeing the FBI during the pedophile’s 2005 Florida prostitution case, a matter in which the FBI eventually intervened.
Mueller served as the sixth director of the FBI from 2001 until 2013. He was the second longest serving FBI director in history, behind J. Edgar Hoover.
He transformed the FBI into the nation’s premier law enforcement agency into a terrorism-fighting force after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
At the FBI, Mueller set about almost immediately overhauling the bureau’s mission to meet the law enforcement needs of the 21st century, beginning his 12-year tenure just one week before the September 11 attacks and serving across presidents of both political parties.
He was nominated by Republican President George W. Bush.
The cataclysmic event instantaneously switched the bureau’s 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’t good enough.
Mueller retired from the FBI in 2013. He had agreed to stay on after his 10-year term was up when President Barack Obama asked.
In an extraordinary vote of confidence, Congress, at the Obama Administration’s request, approved a two-year extension for Mueller to remain at his post.
Mueller was appointed to the FBI under President George W. Bush
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.
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 degree 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.
Following his military service, Mueller earned a law degree from the University of Virginia.
Mueller became a federal prosecutor and relished the work of handling criminal cases.
He 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 threw over a job at a prestigious Boston law firm to join the homicide division of the US attorney’s office in the nation’s capital.
There, he immersed himself as a senior litigator in a bulging caseload of unsolved drug-related murders in a city rife with violence.
Mueller was driven by a career-long passion for the painstaking work of building successful criminal cases.
Even as head of the FBI, he would dig into the details of investigations, some of them major cases but others less so, sometimes surprising agents who suddenly found themselves on the phone with the director.
‘The management books will tell you that as the head of an organization, you should focus on the vision,’ Mueller once said.
But ‘for me there were and are today those areas where one needs to be substantially personally involved,’ especially in regard to ‘the terrorist threat and the need to know and understand that threat to its roots.’
Two terrorist attacks occurred toward the end of Mueller’s watch: the Boston Marathon bombing and the Fort Hood shootings in Texas. Both weighed heavily on him, he acknowledged in an interview two weeks before his departure.
‘You sit down with victims’ families, you see the pain they go through and you always wonder whether there isn’t something more’ that could have been done, he said.
