Goodbye, Ed Jew's attorney Steven Gruel! The revolving door that is beleaguered former District 4 Supervisor Ed Jew's legal team spins once again, depositing the pugnacious Mr. Gruel on the street and leaving the team's latest addition Stuart Hanlon (hired to replace Bill Fazio in the state criminal case) in charge of all of Ed's legal matters. Gruel, as you may recall, was handling Ed's case on the city ethics charges and the federal racketeering claims, but now Hanlon will have all of Ed's cases. Busy man, Stuart Hanlon.

We'll miss Mr. Gruel, who reliably provided this column with a vast cornucopia of material, from the time Gruel accused City Attorney Dennis Herrera of racism because Ed Jew's "neighbors" were white or claiming it was unconstitutional to bring ethics charges against Ed, all the way back to saying it was okay for Ed to go to China when all this news broke. We're very sorry to see you go, Mr. Gruel!

Gruel, for what it's worth, says communications between him and Ed were okay (in contrast to former attorney Bill Fazio, who had to quit because Ed stopped speaking to him), but that he and Ed were starting to have "clear differences of opinion" about how to proceed in the case. Gruel declined to explain further what those differences were, citing legal ethics rules, but said, "I was hired to go to war and that's essentially what I was doing. He wants to view other litigation strategies in lieu of straight hardball." Do you smell a plea bargain coming up?

Picture of Steven Gruel from the EdJew.net website, which still calls him the District 4 Supervisor.