Former FBI Director and special counsel Robert Mueller has died at the age of 81, his family announced Saturday.
“With deep sadness, we are sharing the news that Bob passed away last night. His family asks that their privacy be respected,” Mueller’s family said in a statement shared to social media.
The cause of death is not immediately known, though Mueller had been suffering from Parkinson’s disease.
Mueller famously conducted a probe into the 2016 presidential election which concluded in 2019 that Russia had interfered with the election with the intent of benefitting President Donald Trump.
President Trump celebrated the news with a teeth-baring social media post on Saturday minutes after the news broke.
“Robert Mueller just died. Good, I’m glad he’s dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people! President DONALD J. TRUMP,” he posted shortly after Mueller’s death was announced.
Mueller’s bio signaled the severity of what Trump was up against when former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announced his appointment as special counsel in 2017.
A New York-born Princeton grad, Mueller joined the Marine Corps and led a rifle platoon in Vietnam. He was the recipient of the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart, and other commendations.
He later became a top prosecutor and litigator. President George W. Bush nominated him to be FBI Director just days before the Sept. 11th attacks.
His probe resulted in the DOJ’s publication of the 448-page “Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election,” although it was colloquially known simply as the “Mueller report.”
He assembled a team of top prosecutors who Trump would regularly refer to as “killers” and “thugs.” Through the course of the probe, they interviewed figures including former campaign chair Paul Manafort, former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, daughter Ivanka Trump, son Donald Trump Jr., and son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Trump’s team negotiated to have the president submit answers to Mueller’s questions in writing.
The report resulted in 37 indictments and seven guilty pleas – but its failure to identify Trump campaign “collusion” resulted in the president declaring he was “totally exonerated.”
Trump called it an “illegal takedown,” having long called it a “witch hunt” designed to harm his presidency.
“There’s no obstruction, there’s no collusion, there’s no nothing,” he said.
The report said it “identified numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign.”
“While this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him,” it said on the issue of alleged obstruction of justice.
It cited the existing Justice Department policy that a sitting president can’t be indicted.
“If we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so,” Mueller said in a televised statement announcing the report.
Mueller’s fearsome prosecutorial reputation came down to earth when he finally testified before Congress about his report in 2019, appearing before the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees.
During five hours of testimony, he offered brief answers, sat while lawmakers blasted his work product, frequently asked them to repeat questions, and repeatedly said he wouldn’t go beyond what was said in his report.
Trump at the time called it a “great day for the Republican Party,” and the White House called the testimony an “epic embarrassment for the Democrats.”
Former Attorney General Bill Barr, who infuriated Democrats by releasing a summary of Mueller’s report before it came out, wrote in his memoir that Mueller’s hands were “trembling” when they met to discuss the report. “Wow,” he told Rosenstein. “Bob has lost a step.”
Mueller’s Parkinson’s diagnosis became known after House Oversight and Government Chairman Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) tried to bring him in for an interview as his panel probes the government’s actions in the probe of Jeffrey Epstein.
His family announced the diagnosis in August 2025 and the committee withdrew its request.
