By The Signal Editorial Board
It’s one thing to lie to the community. And, to lie to someone who “buys ink by the barrel,” as they used to say about newspapers.
But when you double down on the lies even after you’re caught?
That takes cojones.
State Senate candidate Kipp Mueller was caught lying about his professional background, claiming he is a “former prosecutor” and, in a case of “stolen legal valor,” claimed he prosecuted some high-profile cases when in fact he was a law clerk or extern on those cases, not the prosecutor. In fact, by the legal definition of “prosecutor” — which, considering that we are talking about the law, is the definition we should use — he has never been a prosecutor.
At all. Ever.
When confronted with his extremely puffed-up resume, Mueller and his campaign doubled down, arguing that he WAS a prosecutor, when he clearly was not.
Sure, we’ll allow that he aided the prosecutors. But he wasn’t one. He was an intern. An extern. A law clerk. Not that there’s anything wrong with those roles – they’re great experience for young people aspiring to be attorneys, which Mueller was at the time.
But the fact is, at the time he said he was a “prosecutor,” he was not even an attorney yet, much less a “prosecutor” handling high-profile cases including “the largest food illness case in American history” and heinous crimes involving “some of California’s most violent and disturbed criminals.”
When it was pointed out to him and his campaign handlers that he had made those false claims in columns he wrote that were published by The Signal, they insisted the claims were accurate.
They were not.
We pulled the columns in question and removed him from the rotation of Democrats who share the “Democratic Voices” column on our opinion page. Frankly, it’s embarrassing. We pride ourselves on accuracy. So yes, we take it as an affront. He didn’t just lie. He got us to publish his lies, when we were acting in good faith to provide voices to both sides of the political debate.
He has continued to repeat those false claims in his campaign commercials, which have continued to air after the lies were exposed.
The Signal has refused to accept any ads from the Mueller campaign until the candidate acknowledges the lies and apologizes for sending us columns with lies, which we then published because we mistakenly trusted that his material about his own bio was accurate.
We’re not holding our breath.
This past week, Mueller quietly removed the lies from his social media profile and website. There has been no public acknowledgement of the fact – and it’s a fact – that he was lying to the voters of the state’s 23rd Senate District, telling voters in a purple district what he thought they wanted to hear in order to get elected. He’s a law-and-order Democrat — if you believe him.
But can you?
