Robert Swan Mueller III was born on August 7, 1944, in Manhattan, New York City. He is an American lawyer who served as the sixth director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation ([[FBI]]) from 2001 to 2013.
Mueller grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, and attended Princeton University and New York University. He 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.
He has served both in government and private practice. His roles included being 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.
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 on behalf of [[Donald Trump]] and related matters. He submitted his report -- known to media outlets as The Mueller Report -- to Attorney General William Barr on March 22, 2019, and resigned his post on May 29, 2019, closing the Office of the Special Counsel.