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State Senate Candidate Allegedly Lied About Law Background
Journalist Puts Forth Documentation That Pasadena Lawyer Michael Kipp Mueller Was Never Employed, Contrary to What He Seeks to Convey, by the U.S. Department of Justice or the Santa Clara District Attorney’s Office
By Roger M. Grace, editor
Pasadena attorney Michael Kipp Mueller, who is a candidate for the state Senate, is lying about having been a criminal prosecutor, according to an allegation published on the conservative news and opinion website RedState.
Jennifer Van Laar, RedState’s managing editor, said in an article posted on Tuesday that a journalistic investigation has shown that, contrary to his campaign claims, “Mueller was never employed by the U.S. Department of Justice or the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s office, and we’ve found no evidence that he prosecuted fraudsters and sexual abusers.”
Van Laar reported that, in response to a Public Records Act request relating to moneys paid to Mueller, the District Attorney’s Office in Santa Clara advised that it has “no responsive records” and that “the Federalpay.org website does not show any records of Mueller ever being paid by the U.S. Department of Justice” (USDOJ”) between 2004 and when Mueller was admitted to practice, on Dec. 2, 2022.
She updated her article on Wednesday, saying:
“According to a website that scrapes information from LinkedIn and other social media sites, Mueller was indeed a clerk at the Santa Clara County DA’s office and an extern at the USDOJ. He hadn’t even passed the Bar yet at the time he held those positions, so was not a prosecutor.”
Campaign Website
On his campaign website, Mueller—who generally sheds his first name, going by “Kipp”—is quoted as saying:
“I’ve always fought for the people. From my time as a sex crimes prosecutor, to my current profession as a workers’ rights attorney, I have dedicated my entire career to helping people first.”
A statement by the candidate is published on the Ballotpedia website. It includes this representation:
“After law school, I served in President Obama’s Department of Justice in the Consumer Protection Branch and later joined the Santa Clara District Attorney’s Office to protect families by prosecuting sexual predators and fraudsters.”
Law Firm’s Representation
Mueller is an associate in the law firm of Brent & Fiol, LLP. That firm’s website says:
“Kipp Mueller worked for President Barack Obama’s Department of Justice, Consumer Protection branch before joining the Santa Clara District Attorney’s Office, Consumer Fraud unit.”
Mueller did not respond to a request for comment. However, David L. Fiol, a founder of Brent & Fiol—while saying that the firm stands by what appears on the firm’s website—nonetheless admitted that its associate was not employed by the Justice Department or the Santa Clara District Attorney’s Office.
He said yesterday:
“[W]e have known Kipp Mueller for more than a decade and have the utmost confidence in his integrity. He has advised us that he worked in the Justice Department through an unpaid externship, and with the Santa Clara County DA in a fellowship through Columbia Law School.”
Column Quoted
Van Laar quoted from a column by Mueller appearing on July 30 in the Santa Clarita Valley Signal titled, “My Work as a Criminal Prosecutor.” The Santa Clarita Valley is located in Senate District 23—as are the Antelope Valley and the Victor Valley—where Mueller, a Democrat, is in a Nov. 5 match with former Assembly member Suzette Martinez Valladares, a Republican.
He said in the column:
“I spent time in two different offices as a prosecutor. First, at the United States Department of Justice, I was in the Consumer Protection branch. There, I prosecuted fraudsters who targeted vulnerable populations. I took on the largest food illness case in American history, helping convict two criminals who fraudulently and knowingly sold food products that were salmonella-positive, causing 22,000 reported cases of salmonella poisoning and nine deaths.
“As a county prosecutor, I specialized in cases involving sexual abuse. I prosecuted criminals who committed heinous, violent and disturbing sex-related crimes against women and children.
“Working as a sex crimes prosecutor, I looked some of California’s most violent and disturbed criminals in the eyes as their sentences were handed down.”
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Above is a screenshot from the website of the Santa Clarita Valley Signal disavowing representations in a column by state Senate candidate Kipp Mueller. |
That column has been deleted from the newspaper’s website. This message now appears where the column previously resided:
“Editor’s note: This column has been removed due to false and/or exaggerated claims about the writer’s past employment experience.”
Food-Poisoning Case
Commenting on the column, Van Laar said in the Sept. 3 posting:
“Based on the information Mueller provided about the food safety case, he’s referring to the prosecution of brothers Stewart and Michael Parnell of the Peanut Corporation of America. The Parnell brothers were convicted of a conspiracy to defraud customers…on September 21, 2015, well after Mueller would have been affiliated with the USDOJ….According to the DOJ’s press release announcing the conviction, the case was prosecuted by ‘Trial Attorneys Patrick Hearn and Mary M. Englehart of the Civil Division’s Consumer Protection Branch and Assistant U.S. Attorney Alan Dasher of the Middle District of Georgia.’ ”
Van Laar, who before becoming a journalist was a court reporter in North Carolina, wrote:
“As someone who actually did work for nearly two decades in felony criminal courtrooms, I feel comfortable saying that there is no way Kipp Mueller, as a certified law student/volunteer law clerk, stood in front of a judge and personally asked for jail time for a defendant in a sexual assault trial as he claimed in his 2023 column.”
What Van Laar has uncovered is a parallel to conduct by then-criminal defense lawyer Troy Slaten, an unsuccessful candidate for the Los Angeles Superior Court in 2000 and 2022. He regularly commented on legal matters on cable television news shows and was routinely introduced as a “former prosecutor” although, it emerged, Slaten had merely done some volunteer work for the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office as a certified law student while enrolled at Pepperdine.
He is now a workers’ compensation administrative law judge.
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