Release the Tapes: Hawaiʻi Deserves to Hear What Happened in That Room

Gov. Josh Green says the Attorney General’s decision on Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke is “imminent.” Good. Then there is no honest excuse left to keep the recordings hidden from the people they belong to.

For more than a year, Hawaiʻi has been told to wait. Wait for the federal case to become a state case. Wait for the target letters. Wait for the Campaign Spending Commission. Wait for the Attorney General. We have waited. This week, the waiting produced two things at once.

A referral, and a promise

On Wednesday, the Hawaiʻi Campaign Spending Commission voted unanimously to refer alleged campaign-finance violations by the Friends of Sylvia Luke committee to the Attorney General for possible prosecution. The commission’s executive director had filed a complaint in May, alleging counts that read like a lesson in how not to run a campaign: filing false reports, unauthorized handling of campaign funds, and unauthorized expenditures over an 18-month period.

The details are not minor. Luke herself is alleged to have signed 14 campaign checks despite never being listed as treasurer or deputy treasurer. Emmanuel Zibakalam, a lobbyist and former campaign manager, is alleged to have signed 216 checks, including eleven $3,000 payments to himself. The committee reportedly failed to disclose more than $7,800 in donations and later filed 55 amended reports to clean up the books. Luke’s attorney, David Louie, said only: “At this time, I take no position, and I have no further comment.”

That same day, the Governor told the public the Attorney General’s decision on the separate bribery matter is close.

What are we still waiting to hear?

Here is what the people already know, because it sits in the court record: a cooperating witness, wearing a wire for federal investigators, allegedly recorded a January 2022 dinner involving Luke, the meeting at the center of the $35,000 question that has shadowed this office ever since. That a recording exists became public more than a year ago. Luke has said she never accepted the full $35,000 and has attributed unreported checks to accounting errors. No charges have been filed. She is entitled to that defense.

But the ʻohana of Hawaiʻi are entitled to something too: the truth, in the plainest form it exists. If a tape captured what happened in that room, then the kānaka who fund this government, the kamaʻāina, the kūpuna on fixed incomes, the keiki who inherit this pae ʻāina, hold a kuleana interest in hearing it.

One system for insiders, one for the rest of us

We have said it before, and this week proves it again. When an ordinary person is accused, the evidence is aired in open court. When a connected insider is accused, somehow the evidence stays locked in a drawer while the calendar runs and the public is asked, once more, to trust that the right people are handling it quietly.

The election excuse is gone; Luke withdrew from her race. The federal excuse is gone; the case is the state’s now. The “still investigating” excuse is running out; the Governor himself calls the decision imminent.

So, we say it plainly to Attorney General Anne Lopez: charge the case or clear it. Either way, release what the public is legally entitled to see and hear. No more sealed truth for the powerful.

The people are watching. And they are done waiting.