On July 20, I wrote an article entitled “No Confidence: We Need to Force Legislative Leadership To Clean Up Their House.” Part of the article concerned an incident in 2022 involving “an influential state legislator” having been recorded by former Rep. Ty Cullen accepting $35,000 in campaign contributions from an unknown individual when Cullen was working as an informant for the FBI. That incident was detailed in a Civil Beat exposé on March 27, by Christina Jedra and Blaze Lovell entitled “FBI Recorded Hawaii Lawmaker Being Given $35,000.”
To date, no charges have been filed by the FBI, and no action of any kind has been taken to investigate this transaction by any state authority, despite it directly involving a state legislator, a legislator who may still be sitting today. I concluded the article by stating that Hawaiʻi legislative rules permit any Hawaiʻi citizen to file a petition asking that the Legislature impanel a committee with subpoena and contempt powers to investigate this event.
That time has now come.
Civil Beat is focusing on transparency, accountability and ethics in government and other institutions. Help us by sending ideas and anecdotes to sunshine@civilbeat.org.
The five-year statute of limitations to bring criminal charges or ethical violations will run out in January of 2027, and if any meaningful investigation is going to be undertaken, that process must begin right now.
The petition, entitled “Restore Public Trust – Investigate the Unknown Hawaiʻi Legislator,” can be found here on Change.org. It states, in part:
“IT IS HEREIN PETITIONED, by the undersigned citizens of Hawaii, pursuant to Senate Rule 67 and House Rule 46, that the Senate, House, or both, under authority granted to them by HRS section 21-3, immediately convene an investigative committee with subpoena and contempt powers with hearings to be open to the public, to investigate what occurred during this purported transaction to determine whether any state laws or ethical rules were violated, to recommend appropriate action including legislative recommendations, and to make referrals to the state Attorney General office or other appropriate state entities.”
I intend to submit the petition to the Legislature at the beginning of December so that it can be acted upon as soon as the 2026 legislative session begins.
House Speaker Nadine Nakamura and Senate President Ron Kouchi must be persuaded by citizens to investigate the unanswered questions about an “influential state legislator” raised by the FBI’s bribery investigation. (David Croxford/Civil Beat/2025)
By rule, the petition must be considered by the Legislature, but it can be immediately killed if individual legislators and citizens do not demand that it be implemented. So now it is up to you.
We must make it so politically costly to the leadership of both chambers that they cannot ignore public opinion. That means people must act, sign the petition and pass it along to their friends and family for more signatures. Only through a mass movement will the petition have any chance of success.
This petition, and your participation in it as ordinary citizens, is the very definition of democracy in action.
But you must get off the fence, you must not be afraid, you must not wait to see which way the wind is blowing.
The time for action is now to take a stand for due process, for open and transparent government, for accountability and for fundamental fairness.
Democracy will die if we let it, through our own inaction, through our own complacency.
Even though democracy is under attack on a federal level, we should not let that happen here in Hawaiʻi. Democracy will die if we let it, through our own inaction, through our own complacency.
As Barack Obama once said: “If we want democracy to flourish, we will have to fight for it. We’ll have to nurture it. And we will have to demonstrate its value, again and again, in improving the lives of ordinary people.”
This petition represents nothing less than an opportunity for the people of Hawaiʻi to speak. Sign the petition and join in this fight.
Click to read the unredacted document filed by the FBI in the Ty Cullen case.
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