For four years, Hawaii Democrats insisted the pandemic money was all above board. On Friday an Oahu grand jury said otherwise, handing up a 12-count indictment against sitting Lieutenant Governor Sylvia Luke and accusing her of trading her power over the state budget for checks written to her campaign account. Luke turned herself in and posted $80,000 bail — a sentence nobody in Honolulu expected to read about a woman who was, until April, the odds-on favorite to keep climbing.
The charges, announced by the Hawaii Attorney General’s office and detailed by Townhall, include criminal conspiracy to commit bribery, bribery by a public servant, and falsifying candidate committee reports. She is not alone. Former state Rep. Ryan Yamane, who went on to run Hawaii’s Department of Human Services, was charged with conspiracy and bribery on $150,000 bail. State transportation airports administrator Ford Fuchigami was charged with conspiracy, false statements and obstruction of justice. And lobbyist Tobi Solidum, the man prosecutors put at the center of the whole thing, is charged with conspiracy and three counts of bribery — and has a no-bail warrant out on him after fleeing to the Philippines.
The detail that will stick is the dinner. On January 20, 2022, according to the indictment, Solidum, Luke, Solidum’s stepdaughter and former state Rep. Ty Cullen — who by then was cooperating with the FBI — sat down at Morton’s The Steakhouse in the Ala Moana Shopping Center. Prosecutors say the stepdaughter set an envelope on the table holding two $5,000 checks made out to the Friends of Sylvia Luke committee, and that Luke took it. As she did, prosecutors allege, Solidum said: “By next week we’ll have 35, so it will be halfway to our 70.”
The checks were deposited the same day Luke arranged a meeting on emergency appropriations, the indictment says. Weeks later, the House Finance Committee — which Luke chaired — advanced House Bill 2392 and more than $170 million in state COVID mitigation funding. Prosecutors allege Luke agreed to accept a promised $70,000 intending to use her office to keep money flowing to COVID testing run by the National Kidney Foundation of Hawaiʻi, a client of Solidum’s consulting firm. That firm, according to the indictment, pulled in more than $7 million off the testing work — tests billed at up to $166 apiece against a national median of $62.
Let that number sit for a second. Nearly triple the going rate, on the public’s dime, during the exact stretch when Americans were told to shut up and comply because the experts had it handled. Solidum’s own words to a man he did not know was an informant, as quoted in the indictment, were about as subtle as a brick: “All I gotta do is give her more money.”
Governor Josh Green, a fellow Democrat, is already easing her toward the door. “The Lieutenant Governor needs to consider formally resigning to address this matter and so that the state of Hawaiʻi can move forward,” he said. Luke has been on unpaid leave since April, when she received a target letter, and dropped her reelection bid. Yamane resigned in May. Every one of them is presumed innocent, and Luke has not publicly answered the charges.
This is what happens when trillions are shoveled out the door with the oversight switched off. The emergency was real; the blank check was a choice. And the people who wrote it are only now, four years later, being asked what the money actually bought.
Source: townhall.com