Two Cabinet Officials Down: The Corruption Probe Hawaiʻi’s Insiders Can No Longer Hide

When we called on Attorney General Anne Lopez to stop hiding the $35,000 bribery findings, we were told to be patient. This week, a second top official walked out the door, and the investigation that insiders hoped would quietly fade is only getting bigger.

On Tuesday, the governor told Ryan Yamane, a former state legislator and Green’s 2024 pick to lead the Department of Human Services, to step down after investigators questioned him about alleged public corruption tied to Hawaiʻi’s pandemic-era COVID-19 testing contracts.



His exit comes barely a month after Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke took indefinite unpaid leave and suspended her reelection campaign after receiving a target letter from the Attorney General’s Special Investigation and Prosecution Division.

That is two of the most powerful people in state government, gone in a matter of weeks.

This is not a rumor anymore.

This is a widening criminal investigation.

The probe began in January, after the U.S. Department of Justice handed over evidence to the state. Since then, investigators have issued multiple subpoenas and interviewed more than 18 people.

Target letters, formal notice that prosecutors believe they have evidence supporting possible bribery charges, have reportedly been sent to Luke, businessman and lobbyist Tobi Solidum, and to one of Luke’s volunteer campaign treasurers, Leo Asuncion Jr., who had already stepped down as chair of the Public Utilities Commission.

The names in this case should sound familiar to anyone who has watched corruption rot Hawaiʻi’s government from the inside.

Solidum, now reportedly fled to the Philippines and is facing a separate federal investigation into an alleged $7 million COVID-funding fraud, was a business associate of the late Milton Choy, the wastewater executive who went to federal prison for bribing former state Rep. Ty Cullen and Senate Majority Leader J. Kalani English. Both lawmakers served time. The alleged $35,000 at the center of this scandal traces back to a January 2022 dinner that Cullen, then working as an FBI informant, recorded.

Transparency is the only thing that rebuilds trust.

The Attorney General is now issuing updates every two weeks, a step forward from the silence we criticized in April. But Hawaiʻi residents need more than a calendar of status updates.

They need to know that this kuleana will be carried through to completion: that if charges are warranted, they will be filed; that if anyone is cleared, the public will be told plainly; and that no insider, however well-connected, gets a quiet exit instead of the accountability the rest of us would face.

Two officials are gone. The subpoenas are out. The questions are not going away.

The people of Hawaiʻi are still watching. And we are done being told to wait.