As the dust begins to settle following Lt. Governor Sylvia Luke’s leave of absence and the appointment of State Comptroller Keith Regan as interim lieutenant governor, a few things are beginning to emerge more clearly.
For instance, the activities of the State Attorney General, Anne Lopez.
PC: w_lemay, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
in January, when the story surrounding the alleged $35,000 transfer erupted publicly — along with speculation that the lieutenant governor may have been involved — the Attorney General maintained that the state could not initiate its own investigation while the federal government was still conducting its inquiry and information-sharing had not yet occurred.
That soon changed.
Federal investigators later informed the Attorney General that they would share evidence with the state, creating a pathway for Hawaiʻi to begin its own inquiry. Soon after, the Attorney General’s office announced not only that it would investigate the matter, but that it would also provide regular biweekly public updates.
And from then on, the Attorney General’s office issued a steady series of press releases updating the public on the case. Taken together — January 20, March 13, March 27, and April 10 — the releases created a narrative arc showing how the investigation was evolving.
These releases also conditioned the political class and media ecosystem to expect timely updates on the public corruption investigation tied to the now-infamous $35,000 ‘bribe in a bag’ saga.
Then the situation escalated rapidly: Luke reportedly received a target letter, and soon after stepped aside from office on April 23.
Yet since April 10, and despite everything that has happened since then, the AG’s office has said nothing further publicly about the investigation. In fact, the April 10 release marked something of a rhetorical shift. Rather than simply describing procedural activity, the office became notably more specific, citing “thousands of pages” of reviewed documents and 18 conducted interviews that were helping investigators resolve “key questions.”
That shift becomes even more notable when one reads the final line of the April 10 release itself: “The next scheduled public update will be provided on Friday, April 24.” Yet no such release appears on the Attorney General’s public press release archive.
So the question becomes, why did the AGʻs office stop publicly narrating the investigation?
PC: “Scales of Justice” by DonkeyHotey is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
A savvy observer of Hawaiʻi politics may note that the silence began at the precise moment the political system began responding as though the matter was no longer abstract. One could argue that the “enforcement mechanism” effectively shifted from investigators to political actors, and once institutional consequences began unfolding, the matter moved from a law-enforcement narrative into a political one.
But that may be too simple an explanation.
The silence itself raises further questions. For instance, what changed to cause the communications strategy to shift from transparency to silence even after the office publicly stated that the updates would continue?
There is also the broader question of how this entire saga, and the way it has been presented to both the press and the public, have largely flowed through a single institutional narrative.
A good example of that dynamic can be seen in the statements of Governor Josh Green, who expressed his manaʻo on the matter during appearances on Hawaiʻi News Now’s podcast, citing the ongoing investigation as the reason for limiting further public comment.
So, in short, are further updates still coming? Or does the narrative now reside in the purview of the politicians?