Meet Robert Mueller's Legal Dream Team

Robert Mueller III was the longest serving director (2001-13) in FBI history besides J. Edgar Hoover, but Mueller also worked several stints as a Justice Department attorney for a total of about 22 years, interspersed with several years in private practice. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein called Mueller out of private practice once again to head the special counsel investigation. Mueller's long history with the FBI and the Justice Department under both parties seemed to give him solid credentials to lead the investigation and potentially explosive prosecutions, possibly reaching as high as the Oval Office.

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.)

Mueller himself is the sole signatory of the indictment of Manafort and Gates. The remaining two cases were filed with plea agreements already in place and documents include the names of Mueller subordinates.

The two attorneys identified in publicly available court documents for the Michael Flynn case are Zainab Ahmad and Brandon Van Grack.

In less than 10 years with the Justice Department, Zainab Ahmad, a 2005 graduate of Columbia Law School, has helped convict 13 terrorists (which earned her a flattering profile in The New Yorker), has prosecuted cases against the infamous Bloods gang, and early in her career even went after smugglers in the illegal ivory trade. Ahmad just began to work in Washington, DC., last year at the invitation of then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch. Though the Flynn case has led to a plea agreement, Mueller may have recruited Ahmad in part for her reputation as a riveting presence in court as a trial attorney.

Brandon Van Grack (Harvard '06) has worked for the DoJ since 2010 in several capacities, most recently in the National Security and International Crime Unit for the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Eastern District of Virginia. In 2016, Van Grack helped prosecute a scientist of the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency for espionage. According to the FBI, "agents discovered a white duct-taped box underneath the basement stairs. Inside the box were over 500 pages of documents classified at Top Secret and Secret levels." Van Grack also prosecuted an Iranian citizen in 2013 who attempted to sell prohibited electronic components to Iran.

The three SCO lawyers who worked on the George Papadopoulos case, according to court documents, are Andrew Goldstein, Jeannie Rhee, and Aaron Zelinsky.

When the SCO revealed that Andrew Goldstein would join Mueller's staff, Preet Bharara, former United States attorney for the Southern District of New York (who describes himself in his Twitter bio as "Banned by Putin, fired by Trump") lauded Goldstein as "my corruption chief ... Best of best in every way. Fair, tough, smart." Goldstein focused on white-collar crime and public corruption in the U.S. attorney's office under Bharara in New York. In 2015, Goldstein received an award from the DoJ for his prosecution of the CityTime case, the "largest municipal fraud and kickback scheme in history." The investigation "involved tracing payments through more than 150 foreign and domestic accounts" and "poring through hundreds of thousands of emails and project documents."

Jeannie Rhee's inclusion on Mueller's staff has been one of the more controversial selections. Rhee (Yale '97) was a partner at WilmerHale, the same firm as Mueller, which both left to work for the SCO. Mueller's detractors have raised concerns about Rhee in recent weeks, but CNN reported as early as June that Rhee was the second-largest political donor at the SCO at the time, giving in excess of $16,000 since 2008, exclusively to Democratic campaigns, including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Rhee has also represented the lawsuits against the Clinton Foundation and against Clinton herself over emails.

Rhee previously served two stints as a government attorney. From 2000-06 she worked as assistant U.S. attorney in D.C. and later worked in the Obama Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel under the attorney general. Rhee's experience came in handy in private practice at WilmerHale where she advised "clients who are the subject of government investigations, including white-collar criminal investigations[.]"

Aaron Zelinsky (Yale '10) is one of the least experienced members of the SCO. Zelinsky made a name for himself as a blogger (his blog is currently on a private setting) during the 2008 presidential campaign. He continued his writing after graduating, including an article in 2013 on how courts "encourage leaking." Zelinsky went on to clerk for retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who once credited the young lawyer for doing "research" on the movie Gone With the Wind to refresh Stevens's recollection of the film.

Zelinsky became an assistant U.S. attorney in 2014, and in 2016 received the Excellence in Prosecution of Organized Crime award from the DoJ. Zelinsky is on detail from the Justice Department while working for the SCO. Just this month, defendants in a bank fraud and identity theft case that Zelinsky prosecuted were sentenced to 10 years in prison.

The initial charges the special counsel filed against Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort and his associate Richard Gates did not reveal the names of the attorneys on the case. 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.

Andrew Weissmann (Columbia ‘84) is perhaps the most powerful tool in the special counsel’s arsenal, a seasoned DoJ veteran and relentless prosecutor with an unstoppable work ethic and a resume tailor-made for the Manafort trial. Manafort, accused of money laundering and failure to disclose his foreign contacts, was a high-flying political consultant who had many powerful friends; Weissmann made his bones prosecuting crime families at the U.S. attorney’s office in New York and leading one of history’s largest fraud investigations as director of the DoJ Enron Tax Force in 2004. As an added bonus, Weissmann has worked with Mueller before, serving as the FBI’s general counsel for a portion of Mueller’s term as FBI director.

Despite Weissmann’s impressive credentials, his presence on Mueller’s team has created some headaches for the special counsel: Weissmann is one of the prosecutors who has been accused of animus against President Trump. Shortly after Trump’s inauguration, acting attorney general Sally Yates instructed the Justice Department not to defend his travel ban, prompting Trump to fire her This prompted Weissman to send Yates a glowing email: “I am so proud and in awe. Thank you so much. All my deepest respect.” The notion that one of the prosecutors pursuing Trump thought so highly of an extralegal action taken in defiance of Trump has unsurprisingly gone over poorly with Republicans.

Like Weissmann, Greg Andres (University of Chicago ’95) spent his early career tussling with organized crime in New York; he was apparently good enough at it that the mob plotted to assassinate him. Unlike many of Mueller’s agents, Andres has spent much of his career in white-collar criminal defense at New York firm Davis Polk & Wardell, working in cases involving insider trading, tax fraud, and money laundering, and has received several prominent legal awards. He also worked a two-year stint overseeing the fraud unit at the Justice Department from 2010 to 2012.

Andres is married to U.S. district judge Ronnie Abrams, who before Andres’ appointment had been presiding over a lawsuit alleging President Trump had violated the Constitution’s emoluments clause by continuing to profit from his private business holdings while in office. Abrams recused herself from the case when Andres joined Mueller’s team.

Kyle Freeny is the textbook definition of a career DoJ lawyer: B.A. and law degree from Harvard, Court of Appeals clerk for a year, and a DoJ trial attorney ever since. From 2007 to 2015, Freeny worked on civil cases, but moved to the criminal division to prosecute money laundering and asset recovery cases in 2016. Before moving to Mueller’s team, she helped to prosecute a case involving government corruption in Malaysia, in which the DoJ seized more than $1.7 billion Malaysian officials had reportedly attempted to launder in the United States.

Freeny has made small political donations to the past three Democratic presidential candidates.

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.

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.

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.

In addition, Mueller has tasked Dreeben with answering a fairly novel legal question: whether President Trump would have the authority to pardon people under investigation before they have been charged with any crime. Bloomberg reported in October that Dreeben has been researching past pardons to determine what limits there are to that presidential prerogative.

Adam Jed (Harvard ’08) is an appellate attorney for the Justice Department’s civil division and a former clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. Jed appears to have been hired less for prosecutorial expertise than for his skill in interpreting the law—unlike many members of Mueller’s team, he has no particular background in white-collar crime. But he represented the government in many high-profile cases during the Obama years, including defending the Obamacare contraceptive mandate in Little Sisters of the Poor v. Sebelius and working on the team that implemented United States v. Windsor, the 2014 case that struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act’s definition of marriage as between a man and a woman.

Scott Meisler (Georgetown ’05) and Elizabeth Prelogar (Harvard ’08) round out the appellate team. Meisler has worked with the DoJ’s criminal division since 2009, and in 2012 won the division’s Award for Outstanding Contributions by a New Employee for handling “some of [the division’s] most demanding cases, often with an imminent deadline.” Prelogar, meanwhile, has as sterling a legal resume as one could hope for: a former law clerk to Supreme Court justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan, a Fulbright scholar, and apparently a fluent speaker of Russia. Like Dreeben, Prelogar is on detail from the solicitor general’s office.

The last two known members of the special counsel are personal associates of Mueller himself: James Quarles (Harvard ’72) and Aaron Zebley (Virginia ’96), who came with Mueller and Rhee from WilmerHale at the outset of the probe. Which isn’t to say they aren’t top-notch agents in their own right: This isn’t even Quarles’s first special counsel, as he was an assistant on the Watergate Special Prosecution Force, and Zebley circled the globe as a counterterrorist FBI agent before serving as an assistant U.S. attorney and then settling as Mueller’s chief of staff at the FBI.

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