When former Honolulu prosecutor Keith Kaneshiro appeared at his arraignment earlier this month on federal charges of conspiracy to commit honest services fraud and federal program bribery, he was represented by well-known defense attorney Myles Breiner.

Kaneshiro and four officers of Mitsunaga & Associates were indicted for an alleged conspiracy that led to criminal charges being filed against a former Mitsunaga employee without a law enforcement investigation, and based wholly on inforation provided by the company. The indictment alleges Kaneshiro took several actions that led to the charges in exchange for contributions arranged or made by the Mitsunaga defendants to his reelection campaign.

Last week, just a week after his arraignment, a legal filing notified the court that Breiner has been replaced by Birney B. Bervar, who also represented former Rep. Ty Cullen in a similar federal bribery case. Cullen pleaded guilty earlier this year.

No reason for the quick switch was given.

However, a look back suggests that Breiner is a potential witness in Kaneshiro’s case, and may have other conflicts as well.

The two men had a contentious history going back decades. Breiner was among a number of deputy prosecutors who were fired by Kaneshiro when he was first elected prosecutor in 1988. After leaving the prosecutors office, Breiner began his career as a criminal defense attorney.

In 2014, Breiner filed a malicious prosecution lawsuit against Kaneshiro on behalf of Tracy Yoshimura, who had been charged in a massive gambling case brought by Kaneshiro’s office involving hundreds of charges. That case was later dismissed amidst allegations of prosecutorial misconduct.

According to a Hawaii News Now story in December 2014:

In a Circuit Court lawsuit filed today, Tracy Yoshimura accuses Honolulu Prosecutor Keith Kaneshiro of malicious prosecution. His suit also alleges that Kaneshiro placed the high-profile case in the hands of inexperienced deputies who not only bungled it but abused their authority.

“Clearly, assigning this case in our opinion to frankly incompetent prosecutors who did not do their homework … is ridiculous,” said attorney Myles Breiner.

“It’s incumbent upon us to stop this, stop the abusive process, to stop Mr. Kaneshiro from further proceeding with abusive prosecution.”

In addition to Kaneshiro, Yoshimura’s lawsuit named deputy prosecutors Katherine Kealoha and Jake Deleplane. Kealoha, of course, was later convicted on a variety of federal charges, as was her husband, former Honolulu Police Chief Louis Kealoha.

In 2017, Breiner was representing Katherine Kealoha in her federal corruption case when federal prosecutors filed an “explosive motion” seeking to disqualify Breiner and another attorney, Kevin Sumida, from the case.

Among the issues cited by prosecutors in the motion was Katherine Kealoha’s leaks of confidential information to Breiner in Yoshimura’s case.

According to Hawaii News Now: “Federal prosecutors included transcript of their interview with Yoshimura, who was being prosecuted by Kealoha and City Prosecutor Keith Kaneshiro on gambling charges. Yoshimura said Katherine Kealoha leaked information to Breiner to help convince him to represent her.”

Breiner and Sumida withdrew from the Kealoha case voluntarily not long after the federal motion was filed.

Two years later, Breiner was called before the federal grand jury as it continued its long running federal corruption investigation.

The allegations in the Yoshimura case are uncannily similar to the current charges against Kaneshiro and the Mitsunaga defendants. In both cases, Kaneshiro allegedly assigned the cases to inexperienced prosecutors who proceeded with faulty criminal charges.

In the current case, prosecutors allege Kaneshiro was initially advised by an experienced prosecutor on his staff to steer clear of the criminal charges against a former Mitsunaga & Associates employee being pushed by the company, which allegedly used campaign contributions as bribes to reward Kaneshiro for this cooperation.

Later, Kaneshiro turned the case over to an “inexperience” prosecutor, who then proceeded to file the criminal case sought by Mitsunaga. The inexperienced prosecutor, both in this case and the Yoshimura case, was Jake Delaplane.

Civil Beat’s Christina Jedra summarized how Mitsunaga allegedly pressed Kaneshiro to bring charges against a former employee of the company, from the indictment of Kealoha and several Mitsunaga officials, identified in the indictment as LJM.

From October 2012 to October 2016, the involved parties contributed approximately $45,000 to Kaneshiro’s campaign coffers, the indictment states. Previously, the donors had never contributed to Kaneshiro.

Around June 2014, an unnamed senior deputy prosecuting attorney recommended against filing charges against LJM, according to the indictment.

But Kaneshiro would keep the case alive regardless after Mitsunaga was unable to beat his former employee in civil court, according to the indictment.

Further:

And that fall (2014), Kaneshiro reassigned LJM’s case from the prosecutor who had declined to charge it to a newly hired prosecutor, identified only as JD. His description matches that of attorney Jake Delaplane, who confirmed as much on Friday afternoon.

In November 2014, Delaplane attempted to file a felony information against LJM in state court. Filing an information is a way for prosecutors to charge cases without going through a grand jury or a judge at a preliminary hearing. In Delaplane’s case, the judge rejected it because it lacked an affidavit from law enforcement.

Soon after, Kaneshiro assigned Vernon Branco, a prosecutor’s office investigator, to sign an affidavit in support of the felony information against LJM.

Delaplane subsequently filed a felony information against LJM, alleging four counts of second-degree theft. LJM was arraigned in December 2014.

Speaking to Hawaii News Now when the Yoshimura lawsuit was filed in 2014, Breiner said: “(This case) was flawed from the beginning, flawed with the people they assigned to the case and flawed in prosecution and presentation before the grand jury and quite frankly it speaks volumes of the failure of Mr. Kaneshiro to properly supervise his office,” Breiner said.”

Prosecutors allege the Mitsunaga-related charges were the result of a criminal agreement between the company and the prosecutor rather than an administrative failure on his part.

If this case results in convictions, it will suggest the similar handling of the Yoshimura case could also have been the result of more than Kaneshiro’s failure to supervise his staff attorneys.