Bob Mueller Quotes

I’m still trying to wrap my head around the idea of someone buying and selling children in the twenty-first century.

The mental leaps from “I’ve got a daughter” to “she’s dead” and then to “she’s been murdered” could span the Grand Canyon.

Jones learned his changeup, or at least observed its grip for the first time, from a future fictional closer. Willie Mueller pitched briefly for the Brewers in 1978 and 1981 but is best known for a role in Major League as Duke Simpson, the menacing Yankees reliever. Bob Uecker, playing broadcaster Harry Doyle, noted that Duke was so mean, he threw at his own kid in a father-son game.

In a way, Robert Mueller had come to accept the dialectical premise of Donald Trump—that Trump is Trump. It was circular reasoning to hold the president’s essential character against him. Put another way, confronted by Donald Trump, Bob Mueller threw up his hands. Surprisingly, he found himself in agreement with the greater White House: Donald Trump was the president, and, for better or for worse, what you saw was what you got—and what the country voted for.

Mueller kicked off the meeting by pulling out a piece of paper with some notes. The attorney general and his aides believed they noticed something worrisome. Mueller’s hands shook as he held the paper. His voice was shaky, too. This was not the Bob Mueller everyone knew. As he made some perfunctory introductory remarks, Barr, Rosenstein, O’Callaghan, and Rabbitt couldn’t help but worry about Mueller’s health. They were taken aback. As Barr would later ask his colleagues, “Did he seem off to you?” Later, close friends would say they noticed Mueller had changed dramatically, but a member of Mueller’s team would insist he had no medical problems.

He watched a two-hour block of Fox News, and then most of the two-hour-long blocks of MSNBC and CNN that he had TiVo’d. He raged at the coverage as top aides came in and out—Priebus, Bannon, Kushner, McGahn, Cohn, Hicks and Porter. Why was Mueller picked? Trump asked. “He was just in here and I didn’t hire him for the FBI,” Trump raged. “Of course he’s got an axe to grind with me.” “Everybody’s trying to get me,” the president said. “It’s unfair. Now everybody’s saying I’m going to be impeached.” What are the powers of a special counsel? he asked. A special counsel had virtually unlimited power to investigate any possible crime, Porter said.

Mueller kicked off the meeting by pulling out a piece of paper with some notes. The attorney general and his aides believed they noticed something worrisome. Mueller’s hands shook as he held the paper. His voice was shaky, too. This was not the Bob Mueller everyone knew. As he made some perfunctory introductory remarks, Barr, Rosenstein, O’Callaghan, and Rabbitt couldn’t help but worry about Mueller’s health. They were taken aback. As Barr would later ask his colleagues, “Did he seem off to you?” Later, close friends would say they noticed Mueller had changed dramatically, but a member of Mueller’s team would insist he had no medical problems. Mueller quickly turned the meeting over to his deputies, a notable handoff. Zebley went first, summing up the Russian interference portion of the investigation. He explained that the team had already shared most of its findings in two major indictments in February and July 2018. Though they had virtually no chance of bringing the accused to trial in the United States, Mueller’s team had indicted thirteen Russian nationals who led a troll farm to flood U.S. social media with phony stories to sow division and help Trump. They also indicted twelve Russian military intelligence officers who hacked internal Democratic Party emails and leaked them to hurt Hillary Clinton’s campaign. The Trump campaign had no known role in either operation. Zebley explained they had found insufficient evidence to suggest a conspiracy, “no campaign finance [violations], no issues found. . . . We have questions about [Paul] Manafort, but we’re very comfortable saying there was no collusion, no conspiracy.” Then Quarles talked about the obstruction of justice portion. “We’re going to follow the OLC opinion and conclude it wasn’t appropriate for us to make a final determination as to whether or not there was a crime,” he said. “We’re going to report the facts, the analysis, and leave it there. We are not going to say we would indict but for the OLC opinion.

Mueller and I were not particularly close and had never seen each other outside of work, but I knew Bob understood and respected our legal position and cared deeply about the rule of law. His whole life was about doing things the right way.

represent you.” “I understand your frustration,” the president said. “You’ve done a great job.” “Mr. President, anything else I can do for you, call me anytime.” “Thank you.” Two minutes later, The New York Times called Dowd, and The Washington Post called. Dowd could see Trump picking up the phone and imagined him calling Maggie Haberman at the Times. “Maggie? Fucking Dowd just resigned.” Trump always liked to be the first to deliver the news. At least Dowd felt he’d gotten ahead of it, had resigned before being fired and getting his ass trashed. Dowd remained convinced that Mueller never had a Russian case or an obstruction case. He was looking for the perjury trap. And in a brutally honest self-evaluation, he believed that Mueller had played him, and the president, for suckers in order to get their cooperation on witnesses and documents. Dowd was disappointed in Mueller, pulling such a sleight of hand. After 47 years, Dowd knew the game, knew prosecutors. They built cases. With all the testimony and documents, Mueller could string together something that would look bad. Maybe they had something new and damning as he now more than half-suspected. Maybe some witness like Flynn had changed his testimony. Things like that happened and that could change the ball game dramatically. Former top aide comes clean, admits to lying, turns on the president. Dowd didn’t think so but he had to worry and consider the possibility. Some things were clear and many were not in such a complex, tangled investigation. There was no perfect X-ray, no tapes, no engineer’s drawing. Dowd believed that the president had not colluded

Moon Fishing" When the moon was full they came to the water. some with pitchforks, some with rakes, some with sieves and ladles, and one with a silver cup. And they fished til a traveler passed them and said, "Fools, to catch the moon you must let your women spread their hair on the water — even the wily moon will leap to that bobbing net of shimmering threads, gasp and flop till its silver scales lie black and still at your feet.” And they fished with the hair of their women till a traveler passed them and said, "Fools, do you think the moon is caught lightly, with glitter and silk threads? You must cut out your hearts and bait your hooks with those dark animals; what matter you lose your hearts to reel in your dream?” And they fished with their tight, hot hearts till a traveler passed them and said, "Fools, what good is the moon to a heartless man? Put back your hearts and get on your knees and drink as you never have, until your throats are coated with silver and your voices ring like bells.” And they fished with their lips and tongues until the water was gone and the moon had slipped away in the soft, bottomless mud.

Bush could be impatient, and it drove me nuts that he started things early, but I was struck by his strong, and occasionally devilish, sense of humor. That year, 2004, he was in the thick of his reelection battle against Democrat John Kerry, who was hammering him for presiding over what Kerry called a “jobless” economic recovery. In one of our daily morning terrorism meetings with the president, FBI director Bob Mueller told him that a suspected Al Qaeda operative named Babar, whom we were closely monitoring, had just gotten a second job in New York. Mueller, not known as a comedian, then paused, turned his head toward me and added, “And then Jim said…” Bush looked at me, and so did Vice President Cheney. I froze. Before our meeting, Mueller and I had discussed Babar’s second job and I’d made a private joke to the FBI director that I hadn’t expected to repeat to the president, who could occasionally display a temper. Time slowed down, way down. I didn’t reply. The president prompted me. “What’d you say, Jim?” I paused and then, horrified, plunged in. “Who says you haven’t created any jobs; this guy’s got two.

Quarles accepted. Dowd thought he and Quarles worked well together. They could meet and talk, whereas Mueller was so rigid, he sometimes seemed like marble.

Early on in Midyear, the politically appointed leadership—Attorney General Lynch and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates—had decided not to recuse themselves. Somehow, they saw the investigation of Hillary Clinton—former First Lady and former secretary of state, current candidate for the presidency, likely nominee of the Democratic Party, who was being supported by the president of the United States, to whom they owed their jobs—as a case they could handle without prejudice. Recusal would have been a reasonable and, I would argue, better decision for those political appointees to have made. A special prosecutor could have been appointed to oversee the case, to work with the career professionals at Justice or other attorneys. It would have been an extreme choice but also a safe one. I don’t know why they didn’t do that. Instead, they made a feckless compromise. They designated career professionals in the National Security Division as decision makers in this case but didn’t unambiguously commit to abide by those people’s decisions. The leadership at Justice chose not to be involved but also not to be recused—the worst possible choice afforded by the situation. They were not far enough removed to eliminate suspicion of partisan motivation, and not closely enough involved to exercise the active discernment that such a sensitive case demanded. It was a fatal choice. Had there been a competent, credible special counsel running Midyear Exam independently—the way Bob Mueller’s Russia investigation has been run—I think circumstances might have been very different, and we would not have been where we ended up in July.

was apparent the president was aware of the criticism he was receiving about his handling of the coronavirus. After surviving the 22-month-long Mueller investigation and the third impeachment trial in United States history, the real dynamite behind the door was the virus. The lives and livelihoods of tens of millions of Americans hung in the balance with every decision he made in dealing with the coronavirus.

The investigation into Donald Trump and his conspiring with Russia and all the other crimes I’m sure he’ll be indicted for made me realize what real men look like. They look like Bob Mueller. A seventy-four-year-old with a six-pack (possibly an eight-pack) underneath that suit. You can see it through his shirt when he walks—he’s ripped. “Keeping your shit together” is what that’s called. A prosecutor, a Marine, and the director of the FBI? How on earth is any woman worth her salt meant to control herself around him and not sit directly on his face? And then, that hair-part? Very few seventy-year-old men have a head of hair like that, and if anyone knows their way around seventy-year-old men, it’s me—they’re my core demographic. The thickness…the salt and pepper…it’s one thing after another with this patriot.

Red Sox fans will always remember Game 4 for three big moments: (1) Dave Roberts’s ninth-inning stolen base; (2) Bill Mueller’s single that tied the game; and (3) David Ortiz’s 12th-inning home run that won it.

If the Apollo 8 controllers were showing the strain, however, today none of that mattered. Chris Kraft, Gene Kranz, Bob Gilruth, George Mueller, and the other members of the space agency brass barely left the Mission Control auditorium except to go home for a shower, a change of clothes, and, if absolutely necessary, a brief nap.

Mueller wrote, “a prosecutor’s judgment that crimes were committed, but that no charges will be brought, affords no such adversarial opportunity for public name-clearing before an impartial adjudicator.