Goodbye, Robert Swan Mueller III

And the bipartisan possibilities you once represented.

Robert Mueller as a Marine in 1968 (Wikipedia)

Robert Swan Mueller III, aged 81, died last Friday of Parkinson’s Disease, maybe the cruelest end a human being might suffer. But the very fullest life, one of principles from start to end.

Born in Manhattan to Robert Jr., a World War II Navy vet then a DuPont executive, and his wife Alice C. Truesdale, Robert the third went on to play lacrosse at St. Paul’s with John Kerry. He graduated from Princeton, and then in 1967 the death of his former lacrosse teammate David Spencer Hackett in Quảng Trị province in Vietnam inspired him to join the Marines. After Parris Island, officer school, jump school and Ranger school, in the summer of 1968 he was deployed as a rifle platoon leader with Second Platoon, H Company, 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines, 3rd Marine Division. In April 1969, he was wounded in the thigh by enemy gunfire, recovered, and returned to lead his platoon until June 1969. Didn’t have to join, didn’t have to go back, but he did.

For his service, he was awarded the Bronze Star Medal with “V” device, the Purple Heart, two Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medals with Combat “V,” the Combat Action Ribbon, the National Defense Service Medal, the Vietnam Service Medal with four service stars, the Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross, the Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal, and the Parachutist Badge.

Mueller survived the war, and then got a JD from the University of Virginia law school, Wahoo! And an MA from NYU. Then he was a litigator at a big law practice for three years, where he was surely quite comfortable and good at the job. But his ideals called, and he took a surely much lower-paying job as an assistant in the US Attorney’s office for Northern California in San Francisco, working his way up, and after 12 years he was prosecuting major financial fraud and terrorism cases in Boston. Then a few years in private practice, but in 1989 George HW Bush got elected, and Attorney General Dick Thornburgh wanted a right-hand man. And in 1990, when many of us were still in short pants or less, he was named the United States Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Department of Justice Criminal Division.

Mueller went on to prosecute some serious shit, like the Lockerbie bombing, prosecuting Panamanian President Manuel Noriega’s pineapple head, the Boston Marathon bombing, and finally locking up Teflon Don the First, John Gotti.

He had the military machismo pewpew bravery the Republican Party of old used to beat its chest about around the VFW Hall, all the right schools, the complete elite package. In 2001, Bush II, Dubya, fortunate son, defeated Al Gore by a chad and appointed Mueller FBI director, where he was confirmed 98-0 in the Senate three days after prostate surgery. He assumed the job one week before the September 11 attacks.

It’s a roller-coaster of a character arc. On February 11, 2003, he went to the Senate and co-signed all that Dubya “weapons of mass destruction” bullshit. But then in 2004, he, Attorney General John Ashcroft, and then-deputy AG James Comey threatened to quit over the warrantless wiretapps that the White House approved while Ashcroft was in the hospital for gallbladder surgery, and Dubya agreed to modify the program to be a taint-hair less awful. And he pushed back on Dick Cheney, refusing to allow FBI personnel to do any of the “enhanced interrogation,” AKA international-law-violating and also ineffective and unreliable torture techniques that his pain-kink CIA was starting to get into.

Mueller straddled that bipartisan fence so effectively that in 2011, under Barack Obama, he became the only FBI director permitted by Congress to serve more than the statutory 10‑year term limit since the death of the first one in 1971.

Where were we? Ah yes, the times before 2004, when it was considered political suicide for any prospective civil servant, and especially one who’d dodged service in Vietnam by being a fortunate son, to besmirch a Vietnam veteran with a Bronze Star, Purple Heart, Silver V, or any red balloons or green clovers representing honorable service. Veterans are about 6-7 percent of the US population, nearly 18 million people, and tend to be extra-engaged voters who have historically overwhelmingly supported the Republican Party; in 2024 went 61 percent to Trump and 37 to Harris.

Anyway, thus the pump was primed for Bone Spurs. Whose very own (acting) Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in 2017 appointed Robert S. Mueller III to be the Special Counsel on that Russian pee pee tape investigation. Mueller’s eventual 2019 report did not exonerate Donald John Trump, or find he had “zero connections to Russia,” or rule out the possibility that Russia had been doing its Vladdy Daddy horrorshow best to help him beat Hillary Clinton should they have been listening. Far from it!

That Witch Hunt caught quite a few witches: 37 indictments, seven guilty pleas or convictions, and assloads of evidence that Trump tried to obstruct justice multiple times. Mueller’s investigation also uncovered and referred 14 criminal matters to other components of the Department of Justice. A statement signed by more than 1,000 former federal prosecutors concluded that if any other American engaged in the same efforts to impede federal proceedings the way Trump did, they would likely be indicted for multiple charges of obstruction of justice. And it concluded Russia engaged in sweeping, systemic information warfare in 2016, no shit, including hacking DNC emails. (And also RNC servers, but Russia never released anything from those, weird.) It found then-Trump-fixer Michael Cohen pumping to make deals with Russians for a Trump Tower Moscow, and remember how Covefe boy George Papadopoulos, Rick Gates, Michael Flynn, and Michael Cohen all admitted that they made false statements to federal investigators or to Congress about their contacts with Russia, and Roger Stone was found guilty of obstruction? It was no nothingberder, and we learned a whole lot about that traitor, his eldest slimeball son, and the various creeps in their orbit.

The rest is history, Dear Lordy, 2017-19, nearly a decade ago, all that was. Two years where Robert Mueller worked silent as a sphinx yet was still the star of all of our daytime drama, our hope for a future. Maybe the rule of law would prevail and Trump would really get locked up! Behind his back, Jeffrey Epstein and Steve Bannon were both busily spilling Trump tea to writer Michael Wolff and others and between themselves, trying to gamify potential opportunities a post-Trump world might bring.

Justice eluded us on the big kahuna. Mueller dropped his report and all MAGA heard was Bill Barr claiming it exonerated sweet innocent baby lamb Donald Trump.

Brave American hero Robert Mueller III died a torturous death no one deserves. And Donald John Trump said he was glad Mueller was dead, because he hurt so many innocent people. As if there are any other innocent people that he cares about besides himself! Gotti, maybe, for 1980s New York nostalgia’s sake? And Trump’s chump goons got all pumped up and decent people got all disgusted and everybody forgot about how Robert Mueller, for all his complications, and even less than two weeks out from surgical tools being up his ass, was still a thousand times the man Tweeter McGee ever was.

How that coward Trump is baffled, frightened, confused, angered, by people of principle who stand up to him! Such folk, beholden to no one but their own personal strict and disciplined code of honor, are his worst nightmare. Mullahs, Mueller, Madam Attorneys General, how they screech and careen through his brain like a never-ending pop-up book! Men like Mueller are why Donald Trump will never again allow any such people near himself. Only the compromised: visitors to Epstein Island, criminals who will need a pardon someday, grifters, people who could only pass a background check on account of being too young and sheltered to have had the chance to get into any real trouble.

Trump was rattled by Mueller, and even Scott Bessent said so, imploring people to have empathy for Trump, given what Mueller put him and his family through.

LOLOLOL! Put them through a lot, you say? It hurt real bad? Worse than a bone spur or bullet in the thigh during the Tet Offensive? Did Trump spend hours sweating on the can and then in front of the mirror, practicing his mug-shot face? Tell us more, tell us more! Actually don’t, fuck both those assholes.

Robert S. Mueller, he lives in you! But only consensually, if you ask. And in Donald Trump too, even though he does not like it.

Rest in peace, complicated guy from a simpler time.