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One Year Into The Job, 3 Big Lessons About Special Counsel Robert Mueller

The taciturn former FBI director sits like a sphinx in the eye of a political hurricane in which he is considered both a villain and an unlikely champion.
Special counsel Robert Mueller (center) leaves after a closed meeting with members of the Senate Judiciary Committee on June 21, 2017, at the Capitol in Washington, D.C.

Updated at 9:42 a.m.

Thursday marks one year since the appointment of Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller. Has any public figure in the United States ever become such a partisan lightning rod after having said so little?

Mueller has achieved the unusual distinction of being both intensely reviled and deeply beloved after appearing on no TV programs and no radio call-in shows; in no newspaper interviews; and in no Snapchat stories, Facebook Live streams or Twitter threads.

Except, that is, for all the ones in which he has appeared — as the subject, or as a character, or as the victim of attacks, or as a crusading grand inquisitor, or in all the other roles in which he has been cast given the absence of his own face and his own voice.

Mueller appears to prefer to let his work do the talking for

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