Like Kamala, This Candidate is Making Up Stories About Prosecutorial Experience
Democrat messaging in the 2024 election cycle is quite different from the 2020 messaging of Black Lives Matter, defunding the police, and reimagining justice. In 2020, the only use Democrats had for attorneys was in furtherance of their lawfare and weaponization aims, not actually putting away the bad guys.
But now that they're working to paint Donald Trump as a convicted felon and some type of career sexual abuser and fraudster, this year's Democrats claim they "Back the Blue" and Harris is playing up her prosecutor credentials, saying over and over again that she "took on perpetrators of all kinds: predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain" and that "I know Donald Trump's type."
To hear Democrat California State Senate candidate Michael Kipp Mueller describe his career, he's virtually a clone of Kamala Harris - or, more exactly, a clone of the current fantasy iteration of the Democrat nominee. Like Harris', Mueller's claims don't hold up to scrutiny; we've found no evidence to support his claim of being a "former prosecutor."
According to a RedState investigation, 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. (But that, too, is on brand for this year's Democrat Party candidates: they have a very shaky relationship with the truth and make blatantly false claims about their resumés.)
Unsurprisingly, Mueller's current descriptions of what he did in those offices and in private practice differ dramatically from what he said when running for the same office in 2020.
In a July 2024 column in the Santa Clarita Valley Signal headlined, "My Work as a Criminal Prosecutor," Mueller wrote:
As a former criminal prosecutor — and as the only candidate running to represent you in the state Senate with actual law enforcement experience — I know what it takes to keep our community safe.
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.
Mueller attempts to make his claim more believable by describing a specific case that stuck with him:
One case in particular that still sticks with me was a father who had been sexually abusing his own elementary-school-aged daughter. Fortunately, she and his other daughters were brave enough to testify against him and we were able to secure a conviction and put him away for the rest of his life.
Notice that Mueller doesn't say how much time he spent in the different offices, and he doesn't give the name of the defendants in the food illness case he "took on" or anything identifiable about the sexual abuse case he allegedly was able to "secure a conviction" for.
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 by "shipping salmonella-positive peanut products before the results of microbiological testing were received and falsifying microbiological test results" on September 21, 2015, well after Mueller would have been affiliated with the USDOJ, if he ever was. 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."
His July 2024 column isn't the only time he falsely claimed that he prosecuted fraudsters and sexual predators. In a June 2023 column, he claimed that he "personally" prosecuted criminals:
Having personally prosecuted consumer fraudsters and sexual predators, both in President Barack Obama’s Department of Justice and a district attorney’s office, I am the only candidate who has looked someone in the eyes before telling a judge why that person should be sent to prison. I am the only candidate, to my knowledge, who has actually enforced criminal laws.
. . .
I’ve put people away who needed to be put away. In my work for President Obama’s Department of Justice, I helped send people to prison for defrauding elderly victims. But what if we could make change in our society, such that the people I sent to prison would have never thought to commit themselves to a life of crime in the first place?
While Mueller doesn't name the Santa Clara DA's office as the location of his claimed experience as a county prosecutor, that's the only county DA's office he's ever mentioned having worked for. However, his current law firm bio states that he worked in the Santa Clara County DA's Consumer Fraud Unit.
Back in the 2020 race, though, Mueller branded himself as a fighter for the common man, "a labor lawyer with an Elizabeth Warren social-democrat platform" (per the Democratic Socialists of America voter guide), and claimed the focus of his law practice was representing asylum seekers at an ICE detention facility in Adelanto, CA, in the Mojave Desert near Victorville.
In a video ad in September 2020, Mueller himself says:
"Coming out of law school I went to President Obama's Department of Justice, where I prosecuted fraudsters and people who preyed on the vulnerable: our seniors and our veterans. After that I became a workers rights attorney, which is what I do today. I represent workers and make sure that corporations are held accountable for their actions."
He skipped over the Santa Clara County DA's office part of his alleged employment history altogether.
A search of the Transparent California database didn't turn up any pay records for Michael Mueller or Kipp Mueller for the Santa Clara County DA's office, and the Federalpay.org website does not show any records of Mueller ever being paid by the U.S. Department of Justice between 2004 and 2022.
A 2024 California Public Records Act request sent to the DA's office asking for the exact dates Mueller was an employee with the office, his title, and his pay rate turned up "no responsive records" according to an email from Assistant DA Angela Bernhard dated July 8, 2024.
Mueller's only possible connection to the Santa Clara County DA's office is through an unpaid law clerk internship. A July 2015 Sacramento Bee article about a company Mueller started with a friend reported that Mueller had completed a clerkship there and implied that it was in the fall of 2014:
“All of law is taught through text,” said Mueller, who started working full time at the company this year after a clerkship at the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office.
Mueller graduated from the Columbia University School of Law in 2014 and was admitted to the California State Bar in December 2014, so that time frame makes sense. The post-bar internship is from September to December of the year, so about three months of full-time experience as a volunteer.
As a participant in that program, if Mueller was assigned to the Sexual Assault Unit he would have had a "limited" opportunity to appear in court and his main experience would have been "in the behind the scene preparation of high-profile cases":
These law clerks are assigned to a division of the office. Depending on the assignment, these law clerks will have the opportunity to observe court hearings, conduct routine felony preliminary hearings, present evidence at suppression motions and handle matters that appear on both the felony and misdemeanor motions calendar.
There are some divisions within the office which by their nature have limited opportunities for a certified law student to appear in court, such as the Homicide, Gang, and the Sexual Assault Units. Law clerks assigned to these divisions will gain valuable experience in the behind the scene preparation of high-profile cases and may be asked to assist other divisions.
He might have been asked to assist in other divisions, such as the Consumer Fraud Unit, but which unit was he actually assigned to? And do we trust his recitation of events even if he offered an explanation?
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.
Local journalists seem completely uninterested in delving into Mueller's claimed background or asking him questions about it, and that's how Californians like Mueller and Kamala Harris feel empowered to say whatever they want about their background, not just stretching the truth but making blatantly untrue claims to go along with whatever focus group or poll results they currently put stock in. It's time to start holding these people accountable before they make their way up the ladder.
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