Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke Received Target Letter In $35,000 Probe
Bribery charges are being considered, Luke’s attorney confirmed.
Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke has received notice she is a target in the Hawaiʻi attorney general’s investigation of $35,000 given to an influential state lawmaker in 2022, Luke’s attorney confirmed late Wednesday.
The AG’s Special Investigations and Prosecution Division sent a target letter, David Louie said in response to media reports, but he said the agency did not provide details or evidence.
“I can confirm that we have received a target letter,” he said in a statement. “Frankly, I am surprised that bribery charges are being considered. I have seen no evidence that she acted with anything but integrity and honesty. Should charges be brought against the Lieutenant Governor, they will be vigorously defended.”
He continued: “In the meantime, Lieutenant Governor Luke remains fully committed to her duties to serve the people of Hawai’i as she was elected to do. Under our justice system, every person must be presumed to be innocent until proven guilty.”
Louie asked the public and the media “to allow the legal process to unfold before jumping to conclusions.”
Luke announced on Sunday she was abandoning her reelection bid.
Gov. Josh Green plans to meet with Luke on Thursday “to discuss this very serious matter,” Green spokeswoman Makana McClellan said in a statement.
Political observers are now speculating Luke will resign. If she does, state law places Senate President Ron Kouchi first in the line of succession, followed by House Speaker Nadine Nakamura, and then Attorney General Anne Lopez, although Lopez has said she would not take the job.
Kouchi already turned down the job once. When Shan Tsutsui resigned as lieutenant governor in January 2018, Kouchi and then-House Speaker Scott Saiki declined to take the role. Then-Attorney General Doug Chin became lieutenant governor.
The target letter marks a remarkable fall from grace for Luke, who was once one of the most powerful people in the Hawaiʻi Legislature. As House finance chair, she was known as a watchdog of the state budget who wasn’t afraid to take administration officials to task.
But her reputation has taken a hit as her connection to a federal bribery investigation has started to be revealed.
The $35,000 Mystery
The AG’s probe is an offshoot of a federal investigation that landed two ex-state lawmakers, Ty Cullen and J. Kalani English, in prison. For years, Cullen and English were taking cash bribes from Milton Choy, a businessman in waste management.
After Cullen was arrested in 2021, he immediately began cooperating with the FBI. His assistance included recording his conversations with his colleagues, according to a court filing revealed by Civil Beat last year that was never meant to be made public.
One of those recorded interactions was a meeting on Jan. 20, 2022, in which Cullen and another man — a bribery suspect — met with another “influential” lawmaker. During that meeting, the man gave the influential lawmaker $35,000, “purportedly to be used in an existing campaign.” The man and the lawmaker are not named in the court filing, creating a mystery that has captured the attention of the public and become somewhat of a media circus.
The transaction raises serious questions about who the parties are, whether it constituted a bribe and whether a crime occurred. A donation of that size from any single donor to a single candidate would be illegal, according to state campaign finance laws.
Luke has been repeatedly asked if she is the so-called “influential state legislator” and has provided waffling and seemingly contradictory answers. She has maintained she never accepted $35,000 but has simultaneously suggested she might be the suspect in the case and has said her voice could be on the recording.
Luke admitted in February that she’d had a dinner meeting with Cullen and a businessman named Tobi Solidum on or around Jan. 20, 2022. During that meeting, Solidum and his stepdaughter Kristen Pae gave Luke $5,000 each for her campaign, and she failed to report it as required by state law. Luke told Civil Beat no additional money was exchanged at that meeting.
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Weeks after, when Cullen’s criminal charges were announced, Luke tried to refund the money, and reported those refunds on her campaign finance disclosures. An internal audit of her campaign’s finances in that six-month period revealed additional unreported donations totaling around $7,800 and unreported expenditures.
Solidum, too, was recently sent a target letter as part of the AG’s probe, a high-level state official told Civil Beat on the condition of anonymity.
For years, the $35,000 case was in the hands of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, whose refusal to reveal any further information about the payment started to wear on an increasingly impatient public. In January, amid public pressure, the feds handed the case file and evidence over to Lopez, with whom it remains.
The AG has shared the investigation is progressing but hasn’t announced any findings yet, to the frustration of Green, who is eager to put the matter to rest.
The governor has said he doesn’t feel comfortable leaving the state for work or personal reasons because it would mean leaving state governance in the hands of Luke, who he apparently can no longer trust.
