There were many significant tidbits buried in trial testimony during the first five months of the Mike Miske trial that didn’t make the news.

Here are several examples from the testimomy of Tia Paoa, who appeared in court on the morning of May 1.

Paoa is a 2011 Kamehameha School grad, making her a year older than Miske’s son, Caleb, and Caleb’s wife, Delia Fabro Miske, who graduated from high school the following year. She then attended Windward Community College and went on to UH West Oahu, but left without a degree.

She said she had been working at Victoria’s Secret as a “visual merchandizer,” when Kaulana Freitas suggested she apply for a job at Kamaaina Termite and Pest Control. Freitas’ mother is Miske’s first cousin.

Paoa said she was hired in December 2014 as an administrative assistant for Miske’s Kamaaina Solar, later known as Kamaaina Energy. She worked for Miske’s companies until late in 2019, when she moved to New York City. She is married and now works as a construction manager doing luxury interior renovations.

Initially, Paoa assised in various tasks, invoicing, preparing permit applications, scheduling, and requesting inspections. When the office manager left, she took over the office manager’s position.

During a three month period around the time or shortly after Jonathan Fraser’s disappearance in July 2016, her relationship with Miske developed into a romantic one.

She said she did not want to appear as a witness.

Gifts

Paoa testified that Kamaaina Solar used a “permit expeditor” to guide their permit applications through the city’s Department of Planning and Permitting.

Shs said he would give planning department staff gift cards or leave boxes of manapua to get their permits to the top of the pile.

She said Brian, the permit expeditor, would openly talk about how he was able to move their projects forward.

It was effective, she said, because he got their permits issued and closed.

While working on the application for one large project in Kona, she recalled that he spoke of giving $500 Hawaiian Airlines gift cards to several county planning employees handling the permit applications, spending between $1,000 and $2,000, using money from Kamaaina Solar.

Forgery

Paoa said that when she was working as an administrative assistant, the office manager taught her to forge the signatures of Kamaaina Solar’s responsible managing employee, or RME, which were required on permit applications and other documents. A qualified RME was necessary in order to retain the company’s license. Other witnesses said Miske’s companies had difficulty finding qualified replacements when an RME left for other employement and was no longer active on Miske’s jobs.

Kamaaina Solar’s RME left the company and was no longer supervising the work, and Paoa said he was just the RME on paper. She said they used his name and forged signature to get permits.

“I would forge his signature for all permits,” Paoa said. Although the former RME was not aware of the practice, Paoa said Miske knew.

Paoa said she forged the former RME’s signature on the $1.2 million electrical permit application for the Kona job. The RME was no longer around, but his forged signature is at the bottom of the permit application.

She went along with the forgeries because “we had to get the job done,” and that the practice was already in place when she went to work for Miske’s companies, according to her testimony.

Later, when the solar business declined due to reduced government tax credits, she became a project coordinator for Makana Pacific Development, another Miske-owned business.

Inside information on law enforcement investigations

Paoa was asked about a Kamaaina Solar employee who worked installing photovoltaic systems. Although he was not a licensed electrician, he wanted to start his own company and asked her for assistance filling out the forms.

Paoa said she was busy, but Mike Miske asked her to keep the employee happy for a specific reason. The employee had a family member who worked for HPD and had access to the names of people investigators were planning to contact as witnesses in the ongoing criminal investigation of Miske and his companies. This information was being passed along to Miske.

Miske told her the information was valuable because he could “lawyer them up” before they met with invetigators. Although she was busy, Paoa said she did provide assistance as Miske requested..

The employee did register a new company in October 2016, state business registration records confirm. And the employee’s name is on the list of potential witnesses filed by the government prior to trial. Also on the potential witness list is a Honolulu police officer with the same last name, consistent with Paoa’s testimony. However, neither appeared as prosecution witnesses before the government rested its case.

Wages paid in cash

Paoa said one of her duties was to go out to job sites and get hours worked from a supervisor or the employees themselves. Paoa said she wrote the information on a Post-it, and left it in Miske’s office.

She testified Miske instructed her not to talk about about employees’ hours or cash payments on her cell phone, and to use encrypted apps to communicate in order to tell him when the Post-it was ready.

She was asked, “Did you think it was odd?” She said it was, and that it was probably done to avoid detection from law enforcement.

Paoa said she would assist in counting and bundling cash, and personally delivered cash to workers for about a year.

She said she delivered from $5,000 to $25,000 a week during that year.

Bank fraud

Paoa said Miske offered to lease a Toyota Tacoma truck for her use, which would be obtained through Makana Pacific. To get a bank loan to cover the cost, the bank required an officer or owner of the company to sign as a co-borrower. To qualify for the loan, Paoa’s name had to be added as a manager of the LLC on the company’s business registration required to be filed with the Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs.

Paoa said she was instructed on how to fill out the paperwork listing herself as a manager, which was the only way to qualify for the Bank of Hawaii loan.

Paoa said she was not a manager of the company or a part owner of the LLC. She was a project coordinator making $15 an hour, not a salaried supervisor.

Paoa said she had supervised one person for six months, but was never considered a manager, and was only listed as a manager so that Bank of Hawaii would approve a loan.

She understaood that after the loan was approved, her name would then be removed from the business registration.

Paoa testified that she filed the paperwork with the state, sent a copy to the bank, and the financing was approved.

She said the monthly payments were made by Makana Pacific.

She was asked: “Did you know it was fraudulent?”

She answered, “Yes.”

Why did she do it, knowing it was fraud?

“I wanted the truck,” she answered.

Miske is charged with two counts of bank fraud related to two Bank of Hawaii loans used to purchase Tacoma trucks. Several other witnesses described similar fraudulent loan transactions involving filing false business registration statements with the state, as well as submitting falsified loan documents to the bank.

Erasing evidence

Paoa testified she was in New Jersey when she learned Miske had been indicted and arrested, along with ten co-defendants. She said she was scared, and began deleting potentially incriminating evidence.

She deleted Whatsapp and Signal, two secure messaging apps, which held intimate text exchanges, information on cash transactions, along with documents from the bank loan for the truck.

She said she deleted these files because she was scared, and knew she had done things that were wrong.

However, in 2020, she was contacted by federal investigators and hired an attorney. After reaching a proffer agreement with prosecutors, she cooperated by disclosing what she knew from her experience with Miske, with the understanding that the information being disclosed could not be used against her in any future criminal proceedings.

She said that she understood that her obligation was to tell the truth in court.

The defense in the the racketeering trial of former Honolulu business owner, Michael J. Miske Jr., got off to a rocky start on Wednesday, when the trial resumed after a week off.

Before the jury entered, prosecutors objected to a defense witness scheduled to testify, arguing that a list of proposed defense exhibits were received too late to be reviewed prior to his testimony.

The witness, Kenneth J. Hines, is a former Internal Revenue Service criminal investigator who was with the agency in a variety of positions from 1991 through 2015. In a declaration filed in court in 2020, Hines said he is a certified fraud examiner and anti-money laundering specialist. He holds a Master of Science degree from the University of Washington in accounting, and teaches forensic accounting at the University of Washington, according to his resume.

Hines is expected to challenge prosecutors’ assessment of what they said were questionable aspects of the Miske companies’ finances.

Hines was retained by one of Miske’s attorneys in January 2019 “to examine the books and records of Kama’aina Termite and other entities related to Mr. Miske in anticipation of an expected indictment,” according to a declaration previously filed in the case.

In his declaration, Hines said he found no evidence in the business and tax records he had reviewed “of money being siphoned off to hidden or unknown entities.”

Echoing recurring themes in Miske defense so far, Hines’ declaration mentioned a laundry list of large termite treatment jobs completed by Kamaaina Termite, and commented on its positive contributions to the community in employement provided and taxes paid.

The disputed defense exhibits include a number of so-called “1006” summary reports. Assistant U.S. Attorney Aislinn Affinito told Judge Derrick Watson that a few were sent to prosecutors about 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, and additional documents provided later, including the latest at 1:50 a.m. Wednesday.

Rule 1006 of the federal Rules of Evidence provides:

The proponent may use a summary, chart, or calculation to prove the content of voluminous writings, recordings, or photographs that cannot be conveniently examined in court. The proponent must make the originals or duplicates available for examination or copying, or both, by other parties at a reasonable time and place. And the court may order the proponent to produce them in court.

Affinito said prosecutors must have time to review the summaries as well as the underlying documents to validate their contents.

Although Lynn Panagakos, one of Miske’s co-counsel, argued that the underlying documents have long been available to the government, Judge Watson said he government’s request for additional time to review the documents was not unreasonable, and said he shared the same concerns.

Watson then ruled that Hines would not be allowed to testify on Wednesday or Thursday. In addition, he gave attorneys on both sides a deadline of “no later than the close of court” on Thursday, but preferably at the start of the day, to provide their arguments in writing with citations to legal authorities. He will then determine whether Hines testimony will be permitted to begin on Friday, or whether a delay until next week or beyond will be required.

After the jury was seated, the defense case began by calling five witnesses involved in forensic evidence analysis for the Honolulu Police Department. I’ll defer to Civil Beat’s Madeleine Valera, who has an excellent concise review of their testimony.

Due to the dispute over Hine’s testimony, Wednesday’s court session was cut short just after 10:30 a.m., and the trial will resume Thursday morning at its regular 8:30 start time.

After the jury was dismissed for the day, Miske’s lead defense counsel, Michael Kennedy, said he expects the defense case in chief will take from 7 to 15 trial days, and could be completed before the trial breaks for the 4th of July holiday.

My post earlier this week reporting Judge Derrick Watson’s order granting a motion by Mike Miske’s defense attorneys for a judgment of acquittal on two motions, and Madeleine Valera’s similar story over at Civil Beat, drew a number of negative comments by readers saying the order reflects bias on Watson’s part and bodes ill for the outcome of the case.

My reply is simple. “Get real!”

I would give Watson very high marks for his handling of this case. He seems to be a straight-arrow, and as even-handed as possible as he tries to move the cumbersome case toward a conclusion.

Watson granted the defense motion as to Counts 8 and 9 of the third superseding indictment. At the same time, he denied the defense motion as to other charges in the indictment, leaving 16 other charges against Miske in place.

That alone should put to rest conspiracy theories suggesting a bias in favor of the defense.

The two dismissed charges stemmed from an incident at Kualoa Ranch in May 2017, where Miske and several associates ambushed Lindsey Kinney, who had been publicly feuding with Miske on social media. Although witnesses say at least two shots were fired, Kinney was able to escape unharmed, while the attackers fled the scene. Immediately afterward, Kinney broadcast live video as he drove away from the ambush, identifying Miske and two others, Jacob Smith and John Stancil, Miske’s half-brother, as the ones who attacked him.

Later, in an interview broadcast soon after Miske and 10 original co-defendants were indicted and arrested, Kinney said he had been offered $50,000 to kill Jonathan Fraser, an offer that had been relayed from Miske through a third party. He said that the subsequent ambush at Kuoloa was because his knowledge of the offer had become a danger to Miske as the federal investigation had been closing in.

At the time Miske and his co-defendants were indicted in July 2020, Lindsey Kinney seemed to be a credible and important witness who could put Miske at the scene of the Kualoa ambush and, perhaps more importantly, tie Miske to an offer to pay to have Fraser killed.

But over the next two years, Kinney’s actions all but destroyed his value as a prosecution witness.

In December 2020, an HPD SWAT team executed a search warrant at his home, using a “flash-bang device” to gain entry, and seized a small amount of marijuana, related drug paraphernalia, and three firearms, a handgun and two assault rifles. All were “ghost guns” and had no serial numbers. Court records indicate Kinney resisted and had to be physically subdued.

In July 2021, Kinney applied to “repatriate” to a new Hawaiian nation being promoted by a fringe sovereignty group, Occupied Force Hawaii Army, and submitted an application to “expatriate” from the United States and “repatriate” with what OFHA was pitching as a fledgling nation.

In April 2022, Kinney was arrested and charged with using social media to broadcast threats to behead several people, including the harbor master of the Waianae Small Boat Harbor, the governor, and Honolulu’s mayor. Kinney was convicted, and sentenced in May 2023 to 37 months in federal prison and three years supervised release.

Prosecutors gathered a number of Kinney’s posts, and that exhibit is attached below. These online rants, along with other videos Kinney posted, call into question his mental health, and pretty much destroyed Kinney’s usefulness as a witness in the Miske case.

That’s a long way of saying Judge Watson had good reasons for dismissing the two counts related to the alleged attempt to murder Lindsey Kinney, which his order explains in detail. Conspiracy theories questioning the judge’s honesty and ethics are baseless.

US Exhibit to Motion in Limine #1 – U.S. v. Lindsey Kinney by Ian Lind on Scribd