· Mueller and the deputy attorney general who appointed him, Rod Rosenstein, are both registered Republicans. Each team member brings a specific expertise. Andrew Goldstein, right, then head of the ...
· Adam Jed. Adam Jed is an appellate lawyer who comes from the DOJ's Civil Division. Jed, a 2008 Harvard Law School graduate, once clerked for Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. He has worked ...
· These 18 attorneys are confirmed members of Mueller’s team: Zainab Ahmad is an attorney on loan from the Eastern District of New York, where she served as a deputy chief of the National Security ...
A former federal prosecutor has emerged as special counsel Robert Mueller's most persistent courtroom critic. He is Eric A. Dubelier, a litigator for the …
· Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, has marshaled prosecutors, F.B.I. agents and other lawyers to investigate Russia’s 2016 election interference and whether any Trump associates conspired.
Several of the team's lawyers came from Wilmer-Hale, where Mueller was recently a partner. Some are veteran federal prosecutors who have tried terrorism cases against al Qaeda operatives or mafia bosses. Others bring white-collar criminal expertise.
The scope of the investigation, individuals familiar with the matter have told CBS News, includes Russian interference in the election, Russian hacking, any other Russian influence, and possible financial wrongdoing. Mueller's team recently obtained records from Facebook regarding $100,000 in ad buys Russians made during and immediately after the 2016 presidential election. Between June 2015 and May of this year, about 3,000 ads connected with 470 "inauthentic accounts" were posted on Facebook, according to the social media giant.
Michael Dreeben. Dreeben currently serves as the deputy solicitor general in charge of overseeing the Justice Department's criminal appellate docket. According to the American Law Institute, Dreeben, who has argued more than 100 court cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, joins the team on a "part-time basis.".
James Quarles. Quarles served as an assistant special prosecutor as part of the Watergate Special Prosecution from 1973 until 1975. More recently, he also was a partner at WilmerHale. He also served as a law clerk in a U.S. District Court of Maryland in the early 1970s, according to Bloomberg.
Some the cases Andres oversaw include the prosecution of Robert Allen Stanford, who was convicted of operated an $8 billion Ponzi scheme, and the prosecution of several members of the Bonanno crime family, one of whom plotted to have him killed.
Last month, CBS reported Mueller is using a grand jury in the probe, which is an indication the probe is intensifying. The impaneling of a grand jury means Mueller's team has the ability to seek indictments and subpoena records, although the special counsel already had broad investigative authority when Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein ...
In addition to a squad of agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Mueller now has 18 attorneys on staff, a spokesperson for Special Counsel Robert Mueller confirmed to ABC News. Mueller’s team has come under fire in the past year for perceived biases against the President.
Mueller has added two prosecutors to his legal team since the probe began.
Peter Strzok, who had been tapped by Mueller to help lead the probe, left the team last summer, sources told ABC News in August. As chief of the FBI's counterespionage section, he helped oversee the FBI's investigation into Clinton's use of a private email server when she was the U.S. secretary of state.
Harold Koh, formerly of the State Department, has said he brought Zelinsky in as a special assistant at the State Department, where he worked the cases of Americans held hostage abroad. Koh calls Zelinsky “an incredible team leader.”. Two FBI veterans have left the team since its inception. Peter Strzok, who had been tapped by Mueller ...
Meisler joined the special counsel in June 2017. Prior to that, he had worked as an appellate attorney for the Department of Justice’s criminal division since 2009. During that he spent a year as the department’s assistant solicitor general, from April 2015 to April 2016. Meisler has experience in cases that involve search warrants & seizures, wiretapping, mail fraud, wire fraud and money laundering.
Justice Department guidelines do not allow consideration of party affiliation to affect personnel decisions. Special counsel Mueller himself has been a registered Republican in the past and was first appointed FBI Director by President George W. Bush. These 18 attorneys are confirmed members of Mueller’s team:
A former federal prosecutor has emerged as special counsel Robert Mueller’s most persistent courtroom critic. It’s not Rudolph W. Giuliani, a former U.S. attorney and now President Trump’s ubiquitous defender, or any of cable TV’s prosecutors-turned-pundits. He is Eric A. Dubelier, a litigator for the Reed Smith law firm who knows international law ...
Mueller won’t let its officers see because they are Russians with ties to Mr. Putin. Mr. Dubelier has expressed exasperation.
Judge Friedrich rejected Mr. Dubelier’s argument of “selective prosecution.”. Mr. Mueller’s counter-motion boils down to this: Mr. Prigozhin is a criminal fugitive who blatantly interfered in the U.S. election and is not entitled to sensitive national security information he would share with the Kremlin intelligence.
Mr. Dubelier argues that people are free to create fake accounts. It’s done all the time, he says. “When it comes to political speech, one is free to pretend to be whomever he or she wants to be and to say whatever he or she wants to say,” he said at an Oct. 15 hearing.
The prosecutor wants to “whisper secrets to the judge,” Mr. Dubelier says, as Mr. Mueller is calculating the “short-term political value of a conviction” and not worrying about an appeals court defeat years later.
The special counsel is keeping most relevant information between himself and Judge Friedrich, excluding Mr. Dubelier. Why no probe of dossier writer? Mr. Mueller won the argument over “sensitive” material. He now wants to hold closed sessions with the judge over classified information — again, without Mr. Dubelier.
Mueller has pursued a basic set of questions: How did Russia, on the orders of President Vladimir V. Putin, wage a campaign to illegally influence the 2016 presidential race? Did any Trump associates conspire with Russia’s interference? Has President Trump tried to obstruct the inquiry?
He also played a role in the sentencing of Richard Pinedo, a California man who unwittingly aided the interference. The son of a journalist, Mr. Atkinson is one of the youngest members of the Mueller team. He graduated from law school eight years ago and joined the Justice Department’s national security division.
The second indictment accused 12 Russian intelligence officers in the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Prelogar deferred her admission to Harvard Law School to pursue a Fulbright scholarship in St. Petersburg, Russia, and went on to clerk for two Supreme Court justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan. She also once competed in the Miss America pageant as Miss Idaho.
Previously, Mr. Goldstein led the public corruption unit at the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan, where he prosecuted Sheldon Silver, the former New York Assembly speaker who was convicted in 2015 on corruption charges. Mr.
A leading expert in criminal law who has made more than 100 oral arguments before the Supreme Court, some as deputy solicitor general , Mr. Dreeben is handling pretrial litigation for the office. His aim is to defend the mandate of the special counsel’s office from legal attacks in court and to help prevent the office from losing cases on appeal.
One of the highest-profile prosecutors working for Mr. Mueller, Mr. Weissmann has prosecuted Mafia bosses and led the task force investigating Enron more than a decade ago. He specializes in flipping witnesses and oversaw or took part in almost every early aspect of the special counsel’s investigation, including Mr. Manafort’s prosecution and the case against Mr. van der Zwaan. Mr. Weissmann’ s aggressive tactics have prompted criticism, but some defense lawyers have noted his compassionate side, and his interests outside work extend to sports — he once attended tennis camp as an adult.
Goldstein. Goldstein headed the public corruption unit in the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District of New York. He had worked there under Preet Bharara, whom Trump fired as U.S. attorney after he refused to resign.
SPECIAL COUNSEL. Mueller, the FBI director from 2001 to 2013, is now the special counsel in charge of the Russia investigation. Mueller ’s legal team includes prosecutors with different types of expertise, from white collar work to national security matters, as investigators continue to gather evidence in the case.
That was about a week after President Trump fired FBI Director James B. Comey. Though Mueller has a large degree of independence, Rosenstein oversees the investigation. He approves the special counsel’s budget and any expansion of the special counsel’s investigation.
The only criminal prosecutor known to be on Mueller’s team who is not yet assigned to a case is Rush Atkinson, a 2010 NYU Law grad who has worked for the Justice Department since 2011, first as an attorney adviser in the national security division, then as a trial attorney for fraud cases in the criminal division.
While there has been a small amount of turnover in Mueller's staff since his appointment in May, the team of attorneys presently stands at 17. The U.S. code governing special counsels states that "...the identity and prosecutorial jurisdiction of such independent counsel shall be made public when any indictment is returned, or any criminal information is filed, pursuant to the independent counsel’s investigation," but Joshua Stueve, spokesman for the Special Counsel’s Office, told THE WEEKLY STANDARD that the directive applies only to the "the identities of the attorney (s) filing charges." Despite this explanation, only eight of the 15 have signed as parties to the three cases filed so far by the SCO ( U.S. v. Michael Flynn; U.S. v. Paul Manafort, Jr. and Richard Gates III; and U.S. v. George Papadopoulos .)
Michael Dreeben (Duke ’81) has worked in the solicitor general’s office, which represents the federal government in Supreme Court cases, since 1988, and is widely considered one of America’s preeminent experts in criminal law. Dreeben is one of only eight lawyers ever to have argued more than 100 cases before the Supreme Court. Mueller has reportedly tapped Dreeben to serve as the investigation’s own legal counsel, advising Mueller to ensure that their prosecutorial moves are legally airtight.
The remaining six known members of Mueller’s team function as a support staff for the investigation. Four—Michael Dreeben, Adam Jed, Scott Meisler, and Elizabeth Prelogar—are appellate attorneys, legal experts likely brought on by Mueller to piece together information unearthed by prosecutors and determine whether it actually violates federal laws.
Subsequent court filings, however, have shown that the Manafort case involves prosecutors Andrew Weissmann, Greg Andres, and Kyle Freeny, seasoned trial attorneys with substantial experience prosecuting money laundering and fraud.
The three SCO lawyers who worked on the George Papadopoulos case, according to court documents, are Andrew Goldstein, Jeannie Rhee, and Aaron Zelinsky.
The two attorneys identified in publicly available court documents for the Michael Flynn case are Zainab Ahmad and Brandon Van Grack.