Artful dodger: The Sunshine Blog was excited to see Sen. Donovan Dela Cruz’s regular Friday email dump into the inbox last week. An explainer on conflicts of interest, it looked like he was finally going to address the pesky question of why he failed to declare a potential conflict before voting — four times — on a bill that benefits the māmaki tea industry. He’s a principal in a māmaki tea company.

But alas, Dela Cruz continues to dodge the question. He refused to respond to a Civil Beat query about it for a story we did a couple weeks ago. And even in his own newsletter where he can explain the situation unchallenged he makes no mention of the bill and his involvement in it.

For those of you who don’t get his newsletter (and you should because he actually writes about a lot of interesting things, especially as Ways and Means chair), you can read it here.

The newsletter helpfully walks us through first the House and then the Senate rules on conflicts of interest. He includes the Senate’s actual language.

Then he argues that in a citizen legislature such as ours, lawmakers are going to have conflicts. So the rules are designed to recognize that lawmakers might be asked to vote on things that, yes, benefit them personally but because they are part of a much bigger group that’s OK.

Like parents, for instance, he says. Many lawmakers are parents but voting on an early education subsidy is OK because a lawmaker is one of many parents.

“It is also important to note that a ‘broader class’ is intended to be, well broad,” Dela Cruz writes in the newsletter. “When determining if a conflict of interest presents itself, the Legislature does not rule based upon what type of firefighter a person is; it bases the class on if you are any kind of firefighter. In this same way, whether you grow cucumbers, ranch cattle, or grow papayas, your broad class is ‘farmer’. Additionally, if you own a condo, whether you live in it or rent it out for supplemental income, you are in a broad class of ‘condo owner’.”

Wow. Just wow. The Blog can only conclude that Dela Cruz thinks we’re all stupid.

There’s a big difference between a “broader class” that includes hundreds of thousands of parents, hundreds of thousands of condo owners, thousands of farmers and thousands of firefighters and, as Google shows us, about a dozen māmaki tea companies in Hawaiʻi.

The Blog is thinking that if a broader class is intended to be, well, broad, a dozen members is not, well, broad.

As Civil Beat’s Chad Blair reported in his story a couple weeks ago, a number of legislators did declare conflicts and either were deemed OK to vote or not. Rep. Scot Matayoshi, for instance, is a lawyer whose firm represents a defendant in the Maui wildfire litigation. He declared a conflict and asked to be excused from voting on a measure establishing the wildfire litigation fund.

“So ordered,” said House Speaker Nadine Nakamura.

As we know, there are dozens of defendants and thousands of plaintiffs battling it out in court over the Maui wildfire. So if that’s not broad enough to get him out of a conflict of interest, it’s hard to see how being the one lawmaker who owns a māmaki tea company isn’t a conflict.

But Senate leadership has never said a peep about Dela Cruz and the conflict. And some senators told Blair that people are so afraid of the powerful Ways and Means chair no one is willing to challenge him.

Shamefully, Dela Cruz refuses to explain himself directly, even to his constituents. The voters deserve an answer.

The NeverEnding story: The criminal trial of Diddy Combs may be over (he was found not guilty on most of it) but accusations of kidnapping and sexual assault continue in a civil lawsuit that has snagged Maui Police Chief John Pelletier.

Last week, The Blog tuned into a federal hearing in Northern California (where unlike Hawaiʻi the enlightened federal court livestreams proceedings, go figure) in the case. Pelletier is one of more than a dozen defendants, including Combs, in a wild tale that dates back to 2018 when he was with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. The lead plaintiff, Ashley Parham, and two people identified only as John Doe and Jane Doe (the Does as they are being called) contend that Pelletier was involved in a convoluted (and in The Blog’s view highly unlikely) scenario that included kidnapping the Does and, along with a well-known football player and a celebrity comedian, driving them across the desert to a house in California where Parham was being gang raped. Pelletier is also accused in the lawsuit of posing as a California cop who pretended to take a report on the rape but then never filed it.

Both Pelletier and the comedian, Drew Desboordes aka Druski, have provided substantial documentation to show neither one was anywhere near this crazy situation, if and when it happened. Last week’s hearing was Druski’s attorneys asking the court to sanction Parham’s attorneys for bringing a false claim against him and refusing to drop him from the lawsuit when phone records and other material shows that in 2018 he was living with his mom in Georgia and working at a steakhouse. He had not yet become a celebrity comedian.

Druski’s attorney, David Grossman, was of course arguing for his own client but was speaking for Pelletier and the others when he told the judge: “My client and other defendants have had to deal with the horror of being smeared in this way, falsely smeared … All of the public articles on this are awful and terrible for these defendants who have nothing to do with any such reprehensible conduct … and yet they have to try and argue their way out of this … There’s no question, none of these people had anything to do with this.”

U.S. District Court Judge Rita Lin agreed, about Druski at least. She told the plaintiffs’ attorneys “it seems incredible to me that plaintiffs would be continuing to pursue claims against Mr. Desboordes who appeared clearly to be in the state of Georgia at the time the alleged assault occurred.”

But Ariel Mitchell, the lead plaintiffs attorney, refused to back down, saying “the Does have no desire to dismiss Druski” or the others. She wants a jury to resolve questions of who was where and when and whether they were involved in any of this. Cell phone records can lie, she says.

Grossman pointed out that the defendants still have no idea who the Does are because they’ve been allowed to file under pseudonyms. He’s said previously that Druski has spent more than $50,000 on his defense in this case and that he’s hoping sanctions can include Mitchell paying some of that back to his client.

Grossman also asked Lin to just dismiss the case if the plaintiffs were not going to let Druski out of it.

The judge is taking it all under advisement and promises a written ruling. The Blog will keep you posted.

Meanwhile, The Blog still has never been able to figure out how Pelletier came to be identified as a kidnapper and police imposter. Pelletier also says he has no clue.

But in a recent filing relating to the Druski sanctions motion, Mitchell says it was the Does who sent her pictures of two individuals in police uniforms that they said were there at the time of Parham’s assault.

“I used those pictures along with several pictures of other individuals in security uniforms to prepare a photo lineup,” Mitchell says, which she showed to Parham.

“Ms. Parham only identified one of the individuals, John Pelletier, the police officer who responded to the neighbor’s house following her assault.”

Curiouser and curiouser. The Blog reached out to Mitchell and Parham’s other attorney, Shawn Perez, asking for more information. How did the Does come up with a photo of Pelletier and how did they know who he was? The photo included in the complaint is from a 2021 interview with the Maui Police Commission for the chief’s job.

Neither Mitchell or Perez has responded to The Blog’s emails.

Pelletier says he just wants to get this behind him and is hoping the judge does just that.

“I’ve provided the plaintiff’s attorneys with clear and compelling evidence proving that I had absolutely no involvement in the alleged incident and that I was not even in the state at the time,” he said in a message last month. “I have no connection to any of the individuals involved, nor have I ever been to the locations referenced in the complaint.”

Giving voters a choice: The closest thing to job security in politics is to be an incumbent Democrat representing Hawaiʻi in the U.S. Congress. The only incumbent who’s lost reelection since statehood was a Republican.

But voters in Congressional District 1 may be asked to decide between longtime incumbent Ed Case and Jarrett Keohokalole, a state senator who said on HNN’s “Spotlight Now” on Tuesday that he’s probably going to challenge Case in the 2026 primary.

Keohokalole, whose star has been rising in party circles for his willingness to speak out on tough issues, told Yunji de Nies and Ryan Kalei Tsuji that he is “seriously considering” entering the race. He cited the just-passed Trump domestic agenda bill as a primary motivator — the one that slashes Medicaid and SNAP benefits and gives big, beautiful tax breaks to rich folk.

“I’m not afraid to fight. I’m not afraid to stand up to bullies,” he said. “And I do think I have a record of going for the big issues and digging in, trying to bring people together to get things done.”

Keohokalole said he would decide soon whether to run, and if he does he promised it would not be a campaign full of “dirty combat that you see across the continent.” But he did hint at having differences on some issues with Case — he did not elaborate — and questioned whether “we are getting the representation that really represents the values of residents in our community.”

Hmmm. The V-word. The Blog looks forward to hearing more about that … whatever that is.

Case, who strongly opposed Trump’s bill, told The Blog via email that “voters deserve choices.” He said they will be asked to decide whether they want to replace “my seniority, experience, relationships, influence and accomplishments, including through my Appropriations Committee, as well as my constituent engagement and services, especially in such highly uncertain and challenging times.”

Case has taken flak from his left flank in recent months for voting to censure a fellow Democrat for yelling at Trump and for favoring the SAVE Act regarding citizenship and voting, which some opponents described as voter suppression. The bill has not been heard in the Senate.

The Hawaiʻi primary is Aug. 8, 2026. Keohokalole, by the way, would not have to step down from his current seat to run for Congress, as he is not up for reelection until 2028.

Cash cows: The Honolulu Zoo is already home to benches shaped like tigers and zebras. Thanks to the Honolulu Zoological Society, there will soon be four more seating options at the zoo, these shaped like cows.

Funded by Meadow Gold Dairies through the society, the cow-shaped benches “will enhance our Keiki Zoo by providing a place to rest while adding a fun, whimsical touch,” the society’s executive director, Mary Benson, said in an email. The benches are each specially painted to showcase a different breed of dairy cow.

The gift of the benches, valued at $8,411, was accepted by the Honolulu City Council in a unanimous vote Wednesday.

Also approved was a gift of 75 portable radios valued at $26,000 from the Honolulu Zoological Society, which will enhance communication, safety and welfare, said Dita Holifield, director of the Department of Enterprise Services.

By the way, there is actually a real live cow at the zoo: Lani Moo, who currently resides in the Keiki Zoo. And the zoo is also home to two real tigers and — after the unfortunate passing of Mr. Z last year at the age of 32 — one zebra.