Andrew Goldstein - a lead prosecutor for Mr. Mueller in the investigation into whether the president obstructed justice.

It’s Mueller’s Investigation. But Right Behind Him Is Andrew Goldstein.

"WASHINGTON — The routine was always the same. President Trump’s lawyers would drive to heavily secured offices near the National Mall, surrender their cellphones, head into a windowless conference room and resume tense negotiations over whether the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, would interview Mr. Trump.

But Mr. Mueller was not always there. Instead, the lawyers tangled with a team of prosecutors, including a little known but formidable adversary: Andrew D. Goldstein, 44, a former Time magazine reporter who is now a lead prosecutor for Mr. Mueller in the investigation into whether the president obstructed justice."

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"With James L. Quarles III, a former prosecutor in the Watergate investigation, Mr. Goldstein has led the office’s investigation into whether the president’s dismissal of the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey — and Mr. Trump’s repeated assaults on the Justice Department — should be considered obstruction of justice."

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"Mr. Goldstein — a donor to President Barack Obama’s campaigns"

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"Mr. Goldstein, the lone prosecutor in Mr. Mueller’s office who came directly from a corruption unit at the Justice Department, has conducted every major interview of the president’s advisers. He questioned Donald F. McGahn II, Mr. Trump’s former White House counsel, and Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former fixer and lawyer, for dozens of hours. He signed Mr. Cohen’s plea agreement. He conducted grand jury questioning of associates of Roger J. Stone Jr., the former adviser to Mr. Trump who was indicted last month."

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"“And why do people lie?” Mr. Goldstein said in a closing argument against Sheldon Silver, the former Democratic speaker of the New York State Assembly, who had covered up illegal payments from a friend seeking favors and was found guilty on all counts. “Why do people hide things? Why do people keep secrets? Because they have something to hide.”

A Life of Anti-Corruption

Mr. Goldstein was born during a campaign fraud trial that his father, Jonathan L. Goldstein, was overseeing as the United States attorney in New Jersey. The birth caused an unexpected recess in the trial as the elder Mr. Goldstein took his wife to the hospital. The event made national news.

As a toddler, Mr. Goldstein accompanied his father, a Republican appointee, to work, until President Jimmy Carter and the attorney general at the time, Griffin B. Bell, pushed the elder Mr. Goldstein to resign, replacing him with a Democrat. Incensed, he talked with his young children at the dinner table about his dismissal, warning of the perils of a politicized Justice Department.

The younger Mr. Goldstein went on to graduate from Princeton and teach government at his high school alma mater, the private Pingry School in Basking Ridge, N.J. He then turned to covering national education policy and medicine at Time magazine, where in 2000 he investigated the deaths of three toddlers in government-funded day care facilities in Tennessee.

Mr. Goldstein filed the article, unsettled that he could not do more. He wanted a career that empowered him to prosecute. By 2005, he had graduated from Yale Law School, and by 2010, he was working for Mr. Bharara, who put him on some of the Southern District of New York’s biggestcases."

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"“You want to have people who have had experience not only bringing high-profile cases, but in walking away from them because it’s the right thing to do,” he said. “The fact that you have a person who’s comfortable saying there’s nothing here, even though there’s a lot of clamor for it, is exactly the kind of person you want.”"


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