Robert Mueller has joined a rarefied club of prosecutors who have taken on the politically fraught task of investigating a sitting president. Mueller’s 22-month tenure as special counsel is the capstone of a career spent mostly in public service, the Wall Street Journal reports. He took down complex criminal enterprises as a prosecutor and had barely been confirmed as the new FBI director when the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks occurred. Mueller, who never uttered a public statement as special counsel, came under withering criticism from President Trump and his Republican allies throughout the probe. “His investigation already ranks alongside Watergate, Iran-Contra, and the Ken Starr investigation as one of the most consequential in U.S. history. In this sense, Mueller’s legacy is already secure,” said Andrew Coan, a University of Arizona law professor who wrote a book on the history of special prosecutors.
Like predecessors in other presidential scandals, Mueller and his investigators often found themselves in uncharted legal territory. They fought a long court battle with an unknown company owned by a foreign state over access to documents, a matter still pending at the Supreme Court. Mueller took a cautious approach toward getting testimony from Trump himself—in contrast to previous investigations of presidents that prompted major showdowns. During Watergate, prosecutor Leon Jaworski demanded tapes and papers from the White House, prompting a standoff and culminating in the landmark, and unanimous, Supreme Court ruling that ordered President Nixon to deliver the tapes. During the Starr investigation, President Clinton testified before a grand jury and even turned over a blood sample to investigators. Mueller sought Trump’s in-person testimony but ultimately settled for written answers to limited questions about Russia.