Robert Mueller

A PROSECUTOR KNOWN FOR RIGOR AND RECTITUDE GOES AFTER THE PRESIDENT’S MEN

- Massimo Calabresi

ON MAY 17, THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF Justice gave Robert Mueller a mission at once simple and daunting: investigate the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election; uncover any coordination between Moscow and members of Donald Trump’s campaign; and prosecute any crimes that were committed in the process.

Since Mueller took up that task, the special counsel has held the country in his thrall. Backed by an independent budget, rare bipartisan support and a team of veteran cops and prosecutors, he has made news even when he tried not to. Loose-lipped lawyers for Trump and his associates leaked details of the probe to the media. Scraps of evidence made their way into public view from separate investigations in Congress. And the President, not known to be a target of the probe himself, fumed publicly as his first year in office was consumed by the once-in-a-generation spectacle of a powerful prosecutor on the trail of the President’s men.

The tension rose when the special counsel started laying out his case. On Oct. 30, Mueller charged Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, and Manafort’s deputy with money laundering and other crimes, and secured a plea deal and pledge of cooperation from a low-level campaign adviser. A month later, on Dec. 1, Trump’s former National Security Adviser, retired Lieut. General Michael Flynn, pleaded guilty to a single charge of lying to the FBI and swore to tell Mueller everything he knew about contacts that he and others had with Moscow.

As the investigation edged closer to Trump himself, and speculation ramped up about where it would all lead, it was easy to forget the essential dynamic of how it all began.