Robert Mueller
Two of Robert Mueller’s prosecutors quit the office of special counsel, the Justice Department confirmed this week.
Prosecutors Ryan Dickey and Brian Richardson, two of the more junior lawyers quit Mueller’s team.
Peter Carr, a spox for the special counsel said that neither Dickey nor Richardson left the office because of political allegations, the appearance of bias or any other wrongdoing, CNN reported.
Mueller’s team of angry Democrat lawyers is now down to 15 from 17.
CNN reported on where the two lawyers have relocated:
Richardson recently became a research fellow at Columbia Law School, according to the law school’s spokeswoman Nancy Goldfarb.Dickey will continue to work on criminal matters at the Justice Department. Though he worked out of Mueller’s office last year, he was always employed by the Justice Department’s criminal division, specializing in computer and intellectual property crimes.He has not officially removed himself in court from the legal teams prosecuting three ongoing Mueller-initiated cases. The cases involving Dickey are the indictment of 12 Russian military agents for allegedly hacking Democrats during the election, 16 Russians and companies accused of operating a social media troll farm to influence American voters and the plea deal of a California-based online bank account auctioneer who admitted to identity fraud that helped the Russian social media trolls. That online auctioneer, Richard Pinedo, is scheduled to be sentenced on October 1.
As we reported over the past year Mueller’s team also consists of the following:
- Rush Atkinson, an attorney on detail from the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section at the Department of Justice
— Donated $200 to Clinton in 2016 - Peter Carr – DOJ spokesman under Barack Obama.
- Andrew Goldstein, a public corruption prosecutor on detail from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York
— Worked under Trump-basher Preet Bharara in the liberal New York southern district. - Adam Jed, an appellate attorney on detail from DOJ’s Civil Division. — Defended Obamacare at the DOJ.
- Elizabeth Prelogar, an appellate attorney on detail from the Office of the Solicitor General. -Fluent in Russian; former law clerk to Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan.
- James Quarles, a former partner at WilmerHale and a former assistant special prosecutor for the Watergate Special Prosecution Force. –Former assistant special prosecutor on the Watergate Special Prosecution Force.
- Jeannie Rhee, a former partner at WilmerHale who has served in the Office of Legal Counsel at DOJ and as an assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. — Rhee is a Clinton Foundation Lawyer and former Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel under Barack Obama.
- Brandon Van Grack, an attorney on detail from the Justice Department’s National Security Division.
— Led a grand jury inquiry in Northern Virginia scrutinizing former Trump associate Michael Flynn’s foreign lobbying. - Aaron Zebley, a former partner at WilmerHale who has previously served with Mueller at the FBI and has served as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia. — Worked with Robert Mueller at the WilmerHale firm.
- Zainab Ahmad, a top national security prosecutor on detail from U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of New York.
- Michael Dreeben, an appellate attorney on detail from the Office of the Solicitor General, described by former colleagues as one of the brightest criminal law experts of the past two generations.
Peter Strzok and his mistress Lisa Page were thrown off of the investigation after Trump-hating text messages between the two FBI agents were discovered by Inspector General Horowitz.
In May, the office of special counsel released a statement of expenditures revealing over $17 million had already been spent on the fraudulent Russian collusion investigation.
