Robert Mueller

His paternal great-grandfather, Gustave A. Mueller, was a prominent doctor in Pittsburgh, whose own father, August C. E. Müller, had immigrated to the United States in 1855 from the Province of Pomerania in the Kingdom of Prussia (a historical territory whose area included land now part of Poland and the north-eastern edge of Germany).

On his mother's side, he is a great-grandson of the railroad executive William Truesdale.

Mueller grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, where he attended Princeton Country Day School (now known as the Princeton Day School).

Robert Swan Mueller III (born August 7, 1944) is an American lawyer who served as the sixth director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from 2001 to 2013.

A graduate of Princeton University and New York University, Mueller served as a Marine Corps officer during the Vietnam War, receiving a Bronze Star for heroism and a Purple Heart.

He subsequently attended the University of Virginia School of Law.

Mueller is a registered Republican in Washington, D.C., and was appointed and reappointed to Senate-confirmed positions by presidents George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama.

Mueller has served both in government and private practice.

He was an assistant United States attorney, a United States attorney, United States assistant attorney general for the Criminal Division, a homicide prosecutor in Washington, D.C., acting United States deputy attorney general, partner at D.C. law firm WilmerHale and director of the FBI.

Mueller was born on August 7, 1944, at Doctors Hospital in the New York City borough of Manhattan, the first child of Alice C. Truesdale (1920–2007) and Robert Swan Mueller Jr. (1916–2007).

He has four younger sisters: Susan, Sandra, Joan, and Patricia.

His father was an executive with DuPont who had served as a Navy officer in the Atlantic and Mediterranean theaters during World War II.

His father majored in psychology at Princeton University and played varsity lacrosse.

Mueller is of German, English, and Scottish descent.

After he completed eighth grade, his family moved to Philadelphia while Mueller himself went on to attend St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire for high school, where he was captain of the soccer, hockey, and lacrosse teams and won the Gordon Medal as the school's top athlete in 1962.

A lacrosse teammate and classmate at St. Paul's School was future Massachusetts Senator and Secretary of State John Kerry.

After graduating from St. Paul's, Mueller entered Princeton University, where he continued to play lacrosse, receiving a Bachelor of Arts in politics in 1966 after completing a senior thesis titled "Acceptance of Jurisdiction in the South West Africa Cases."

Mueller was a member of University Cottage Club while he was a student at Princeton.

Mueller earned a Master of Arts in international relations from New York University in 1967.

Hackett was a Marine Corps first lieutenant in the infantry and was killed in 1967 in Quảng Trị province by small arms fire.

In 1968, Mueller joined the United States Marine Corps.

After waiting a year so a knee injury could heal, Mueller was accepted for officer training in the United States Marine Corps in 1968, attending training at Parris Island, Officer Candidate School, Army Ranger School, and Army jump school.

Of these, he said later that he considered Ranger School the most valuable because he felt "more than anything teaches you about how you react with no sleep and nothing to eat."

In the summer of 1968, he was sent to South Vietnam, where he served as a rifle platoon leader as a second lieutenant with Second Platoon, H Company, 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines, 3rd Marine Division.

On December 11, 1968, during an engagement in Operation Scotland II, he earned the Bronze Star with "V" device for combat valor for rescuing a wounded Marine under enemy fire during an ambush in which he saw half of his platoon become casualties.

In April 1969, he received an enemy gunshot wound in the thigh, recovered, and returned to lead his platoon until June 1969.

For his service in and during the Vietnam War, his military decorations and awards include: the Bronze Star Medal with Combat "V", Purple Heart Medal, two Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medals with Combat "V", Combat Action Ribbon, National Defense Service Medal, Vietnam Service Medal with four service stars, Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross, Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal, and Parachutist Badge.

After recuperating at a field hospital near Da Nang, Mueller became aide-de-camp to 3rd Marine Division's commanding general, then–Major General William K. Jones, where he "significantly contributed to the rapport" Jones had with other officers, according to one report.

Mueller had originally considered making the Marines his career, but he explained later that he found non-combat life in the corps to be unexciting.

After returning from South Vietnam, Mueller was briefly stationed at Henderson Hall, before leaving active-duty service in August 1970 at the rank of captain.

Reflecting on his service in the Vietnam War, Mueller said, "I consider myself exceptionally lucky to have made it out of Vietnam. There were many—many—who did not. And perhaps because I did survive Vietnam, I have always felt compelled to contribute."

He is the only FBI Director that Congress has allowed to serve more than the statutory limit of 10 years since the death of J. Edgar Hoover in 1972 by giving him a special two-year extension.

After his military service, he enrolled at the University of Virginia School of Law where he served on the Virginia Law Review and graduated in 1973.

Mueller has cited the combat death of his Princeton lacrosse teammate David Spencer Hackett in the Vietnam War as an influence on his decision to pursue military service.

Of his classmate, Mueller has said, "One of the reasons I went into the Marine Corps was because we lost a very good friend, a Marine in Vietnam, who was a year ahead of me at Princeton. There were a number of us who felt we should follow his example and at least go into the service. And it flows from there."

In 2009, he told a writer that despite his other accomplishments, he was still "most proud the Marine Corps deemed me worthy of leading other Marines."

On May 17, 2017, Mueller was appointed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein as special counsel overseeing an investigation into allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and related matters.

He submitted his report to Attorney General William Barr on March 22, 2019.

On April 18, the Department of Justice released it.

On May 29, he resigned his post and the Office of the Special Counsel was closed.