Senate candidate Mueller defends claims about law experience 

California state Senate candidate Kipp Mueller. Photo courtesy of the Kipp Mueller campaign.
California state Senate candidate Kipp Mueller. Photo courtesy of the Kipp Mueller campaign.
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State Senate candidate Kipp Mueller’s description of himself as a prosecutor for both the U.S. Department of Justice and a district attorney’s office has come into question after a conservative website published a story on Tuesday contending the Democrat had made false claims about his professional background in a pair of columns published by The Signal. 

Mueller defended his recounting of his experience Wednesday in a phone interview, saying he worked as a prosecutor with the DOJ through an externship program while at Columbia Law School and then as a clerk for the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s office working with the consumer fraud unit before being transferred to the sex crimes unit. 

In the opinion columns, Mueller did not acknowledge that he was an intern, extern or clerk, instead using descriptors like, “former criminal prosecutor” and “sex crimes prosecutor.” 

Public records available online do not list Mueller as ever having been an employee of either the Santa Clara DA’s office or the DOJ. His non-employee work for the two agencies was in the role of a law clerk and an extern, respectively. 

Mueller’s time with the DOJ, he said, came during his final semester at the Columbia University School of Law, and he said it is “normal” to be a “prosecutor” during the end of your time at law school. 

According to the California State Bar website, he was not admitted to the bar until December 2014. Mueller said he took the bar exam following his externship with the DOJ and then worked for the Santa Clara DA’s office through a fellowship program at Columbia. 

Mueller’s claims that he was a prosecutor for both the DOJ and DA’s office came under scrutiny after an article was published late Tuesday evening on redstate.com that alleged that, according to public records, he had never worked for either agency and had never been a “prosecutor” for either one. 

By definition, a prosecutor is a deputy district attorney “assigned to represent the people of the state of California,” according to L.A. County Deputy District Attorney Jonathan Hatami, a Santa Clarita Valley resident. “In order to be a DDA, you must have passed the California State Bar exam, and then take an oath and get sworn in [by the district attorney]. Los Angeles, like many other counties in California, also requires a month-long academy class before becoming a DDA and getting sworn in.” 

“Law clerks and legal externs are not prosecutors,” Hatami said. “They are definitely not ‘child abuse prosecutors,’ ‘sex crimes prosecutors’ or ‘gang prosecutors.’ Law clerks assist attorneys and judges with legal research, writing motions and other tasks, and can handle lower-level preliminary hearings and trials with the direct supervision of a DDA.” 

According to Lindsey Bubar, a general consultant for Mueller’s campaign, “You can serve as a prosecutor on a clerkship basis.”  

She added that being a member of the California Bar “had no bearing on his role” as he “appeared in court as a prosecutor on behalf of the people on several occasions, in addition to performing other duties related to serving as a prosecutor.” 

Former L.A. County District Attorney Steve Cooley said in a phone interview Wednesday that “interns, externs and volunteers are not prosecutors,” and that anyone saying otherwise is “exaggerating their credentials to the Nth degree.” 

“In order for a person to claim to be a prosecutor, you have to be a member of the California State Bar and must be sworn in by a prosecutorial agency that prosecutes crimes,” Cooley said, adding that this is defined in government code.  

Cooley said the only agencies that can swear in prosecutors are the state attorney general, a county district attorney’s office or a city attorney’s office. 

“People that exaggerate their credentials as law enforcement, prosecutors, military, those professions that are highly regarded, people who lie about that should be totally distrusted with everything and should never hold public office,” Cooley said. 

Mueller twice alluded in columns published by The Signal to prosecuting cases for both the DOJ and the Santa Clara DA’s office. 

He wrote in the most recent column in July that he, while with the DA’s office, “looked some of California’s most violent and disturbed criminals in the eyes as their sentences were handed down,” and cited, without naming anyone specifically, a case in which a father was convicted of sexually abusing his daughter. 

In that same column he wrote that he “took on the largest food illness case in American history” while serving as a DOJ prosecutor. Without naming any individuals, he described the case in which two people were convicted of knowingly selling “food products that were salmonella-positive, causing 22,000 reported cases of salmonella poisoning and nine deaths.”  

That case, he said Wednesday, was for the prosecution of brothers Stewart and Michael Parnell of the Peanut Corporation of America, who were convicted in September 2014.  

The sentence in the case was not announced until Sept. 21, 2015, well after Mueller left the DOJ, though he said Wednesday he worked on the case during the pretrial stage and had to leave the DOJ upon graduating from law school. 

A DOJ news release about the sentencing did not list Mueller as a prosecutor. “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,” the release said. 

Bubar provided emails Wednesday that show Mueller was involved with the Santa Clara DA’s office, but do not mention that he was a “prosecutor.” One was from a deputy district attorney with the San Francisco DA’s office in response to Mueller expressing an interest in continuing to work on sex crimes cases. Another was sent to a colleague in regard to a courtroom door being locked, while another was sent to Mueller and DA’s office colleagues regarding wearing ID badges while at courthouses. 

Signal Publisher/Owner Richard Budman issued the following statement in response to the factual questions surrounding Mueller’s columns: 

“In light of the newly revealed information regarding Kipp Mueller’s exaggerated claims about his past roles in criminal prosecution, we have removed the two columns in question from our website. We take accuracy very seriously and regret that this occurred. We apologize to our readers for any false or inflated impression these columns may have created about the level of Mr. Mueller’s prosecutorial experience.” 

The two commentaries by Mueller were published June 13, 2023, and July 30, 2024, as part of a weekly opinion page column called “Democratic Voices.” It’s one of two columns in which rotating rosters of columnists appear on the opinion page expressing the views of either Republicans or Democrats. The Republican version is called “Right Here, Right Now.” 

Mueller, a Democrat, is running against Republican Suzette Martinez Valladares, formerly the assemblywoman representing the 38th District, for the state Senate seat currently occupied by Sen. Scott Wilk, R-Santa Clarita. Wilk was unable to run again after reaching his term limit in the Senate. 

The race for the 23rd Senate District, which encompasses most of the Santa Clarita Valley, as well as the Antelope and Victor valleys, is set to be voted on in the Nov. 5 general election. 

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