A story in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser this morning reported on Wednesday’s arraignment of former Honolulu Corporation Counsel, Donna Leong, on a second round of charges handed down in a superseding indictment by a federal grand jury (“ Former Honolulu corporation counsel Donna Leong did not lie to the FBI, attorney says,”).
The strong denial issued by Leong’s attorney is interesting, since this interview was certainly recorded, and the jury will hear the original recording if the case ultimately goes to trial.
I was also struck by this sentence in the story by S-A reporter Peter Boylan:
“It is not clear why the Justice Department elected to file the new allegations three months after the initial Dec. 16 indictment of Leong, former Managing Director Roy Amemiya and former Honolulu Police Commission Chair Max Sword.“
Virtually the same sentence, sans Amemiya and Sword’s titles, appeard in Boylan’s story last week when the superseding indictment was announced.
The thing is that superseding indictments are not unusual, so why the need to raise repeatedly raise this general question which does nothing except perhaps question the intentions of thd federal prosecutors.
The indictment was issued by a federal grand jury in Honolulu. It seems likely that the grand jury continued to meet and to consider new evidence after the initial indictments were issued in December, and issued the superseding indictments as the evidence accumulated.
Not unusual. Take the case of the so-called “Miske Enteprise,” an alleged criminal conspiracy controlled by former Honolulu business owner, Michael J. Miske, Jr. The original indictment in the case was issued in July 2019 and remained sealed for a year, before a first supersedingn indictment was handed down, dramatically expanding the charges and the number of defendants. Then, in July 2021, a second superseding indictment was issued by the grand jury, adding two new defendants and removing two that had already entered guilty pleas.
Former prosecutor Katherine Kealoha and her husband, Honolulu’s former police chief, were also subject of an original and superseding indictments.
I’ll be interested to learn the outcome of a hearing being held today to consider a motion to dismiss the charges lodged against former managing director, Roy Amemiya.
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Well if that brilliant defense fails, Leong and Co. could blame Ian Lind for there plight.
Although, that would a kin them to the Kealoha’s and Miskey Enterprise. The connection of dots to Lee developments donors, including Caldwell, Amemiya and many others in the City Family Circle.
Will have to wait and see if the Grand Jury keeps on churning out additional charges…but if the defense arguments are made in pathetic desperation, than the Lind Defense is all they’ve got. That and an empty bottle of Targets finest Vino in Portland. Message in the bottle reads “guilty on all counts”.
Question is, which of the Three Stooges will break first and rat out the others?? And I’m waiting for a cameo appearance by disgraced ex HNL mayor Caldwell.
I’m as curious as Mr. Lind .. the articles in SA seem rather subjective, especially considering this is a high profile case.
I’m astonished, but not disappointed in Peter Boylan’s column. We all know that the SA is very non-critical of the previous organization’s bs. Maybe Ian has a better idea of Peter’s angle on this. Ian, thank you for providing the truth on this ongoing saga.
The other problem is that many people seem to be missing the point of the original indictment, or seem intent on misdirecting attention by claiming that the negotiation of, and actual provision of, the Kealoha payout was legal, and that former city budget director Nelson Koyanagi can somehow prove it. But remember, nobody is charged with making an illegal payout. The three defendants are charged with conspiracy. So even if the structure of the actual payout did not violate any laws, the defendants may still be guilty of conspiracy.
For example, if the Blues Brothers hop in their ’74 Dodge and start driving to Bob’s Country Bunker with the intent to rob it, but the car runs out of gas one block away so that the robbery cannot be completed, the brothers are still guilty of conspiracy even if they are not guilty of robbery. And it doesn’t matter if they believed they were on a mission from God and the plan was to use the money to pay the delinquent property taxes of the Helen of the Blessed Shroud Orphanage. Still guilty of conspiracy. And if Elwood later lied to the FBI about the conspiracy and The Penguin recorded incriminating statements and will testify against him, well then there’s that too.
And if booking agent Maury Sline was behind the whole thing, then Jake might say he was up Shit Creek. But let’s wait for the sequel.
The conspiracy alleged here involved accessing money from HPD’s salary account to make the Kealoha payout by chopping the money into small pieces that didn’t require City Council approval, then reconsolidating the pieces into a single check to make the payout, and attempting to induce HPD to participate in a scheme to backfill the salary account and replace the money by lying to the Council that additional funding was needed from a provisional account to pay for new HPD hires. That last part is key. Evidence of the conspiracy includes recorded conversations, according to previous media reports, though the defense alleges those conversations have been misconstrued and included no criminal intent.
So is anyone here headed to Joliet or otherwise up the creek? It will be fascinating to watch this drama unfold.
As Aretha would say, You Better Think!
I really don’t see a problem with a little indirect speculation about possible reasons for adding new charges in a superseding indictment. In fact, SA should have interviewed somebody credible to elaborate on potential reasons and consequences.
SA does have some huge problems with basic editing, however.
A story posted Friday about the city transitioning quarantine housing into low-income residential housing contained this doozy: “Honolulu County took over operations of Harbor Arms on Jan. 1 after the state handed over responsibility for providing them over to counties in Hawaii. It opened the West Loch isolation-quarantine facility Jan. 31.”
Huh? This garbled nonsense remains in the story a full day later, so apparently nobody there sees a problem or bothered to actually read it.
Basic information about ownership of the properties, costs associated with the transition and new operations, qualifications for new residents, or an application process or contact information are completely absent, leaving needy potential tenants in the dark. But there’s lots of boasting by the mayor about city departments and contracted service providers functioning well together, which should be the normal expectation rather than an amazing and unusual achievement.