Russia investigation Special Counsel Robert Mueller will help teach a class on that investigation and the role of a special investigator at the University of Virginia (UVA) School of Law, UVA announced Wednesday. Deputy Special Counsel Aaron Zebley and two other senior members of the team will teach the six-session in-person class this fall, with Mueller leading at least one class.
“I was fortunate to attend UVA Law School after the Marine Corps, and I’m fortunate to be returning there now,” Mueller said in a press release. “I look forward to engaging with the students this fall.”
Zebley is also a UVA alumnus. The Mueller Report and the Role of the Special Counsel class is sponsored by UVA’s Karsh Center for Law and Democracy; Mueller and Zebley will participate as distinguished fellows of the center. Joining them will be former Senior Counsel to Mueller Jim Quarles and Senior Assistant Special Counsel Andrew Goldstein. According to the announcement, Mueller hopes to bring in other prosecutors from the investigation and guest speakers.
The course will take “students inside the investigation that dominated headlines during the Trump administration,” the press release states.
Mueller served as FBI Director from 2001 to 2013, and in 2017 he was appointed special counsel over an investigation into possible Russian interference in the 2016 elections and allegations of involvement by Trump associates. Trump called the investigation a “witch hunt.” The lengthy investigation concluded that Russia interfered in the election and several people were charged with making false statements, according to CBS News.
Still, the Mueller report was vague about Trump, famously stating, “[I]f we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice we would so state[….] [W]hile this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”
“The course will focus on a key set of decisions made during the special counsel’s investigation,” the UVA release states. “Instructors will talk about the legal and practical context for those decisions in a discussion format, and walk through the challenges and trade-offs when making decisions in a high-profile investigation.”
The course is only open to UVA Law students.
Heritage Foundation Legal Fellow Zack Smith said, “Robert Mueller has had a very interesting career, has a lot of experience, and so I think he’d be an interesting person to listen to.”
But Smith said it seems like the course is mainly meant to raise the school’s profile.
“Probably most of what you would learn would be out in the open already,” he said. “You may learn a little bit more about the thought process of the investigator, some challenges they face. Kind of get the Monday morning quarterback version of what happened.”
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Eric Burk is a reporter at The Virginia Star and the Star News Network. Email tips to [email protected]
