At least five people, including two former elected officials, testified as witnesses before a federal grand jury last week and were questioned about $300,000 in campaign contributions from a prominent businessman and network of donors.
Former City Council member Ann Kobayashi, former U.S. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa and at least three others were questioned Thursday by assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Wheat about donations from Honolulu engineering executive Dennis Mitsunaga, his employees and family members between 2008 and 2020, according to Kobayashi and sources with knowledge of the ongoing U.S. Department of Justice investigation.
Mitsunaga is the founder and owner of Mitsunaga and Associates Inc.
Wheat has served as a special attorney for the U.S. attorney general prosecuting interdistrict conflict cases in Hawaii and Arizona since 2012. His team of prosecutors is investigating allegations that law enforcement officers, elected officials and their supporters in private business conspired to abuse their positions to vanquish opponents.
Wheat’s ongoing, wide-ranging investigation resulted in the 2019 conviction of former Honolulu police Chief Louis Kealoha and his estranged wife, former Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Katherine Kealoha.
Kealoha was sentenced to seven years in prison, and Katherine Kealoha received 13 years in December 2020, after being convicted of conspiracy, fraud and obstruction of justice in a probe that started with a report that the Kealohas’ mailbox was stolen.
In 2018 former city Prosecutor Keith Kaneshiro and two of his deputies received letters notifying them they were the target of Wheat’s investigation.
On Jan. 12 former city Corporation Counsel Donna Leong, former Honolulu Police Commission Chairman Max Sword and former city Managing Director Roy Amemiya were taken into federal custody after a Dec. 16 indictment was unsealed accusing the trio of conspiring to defraud the government in connection with a $250,000 retirement settlement for Kealoha.
They entered pleas of not guilty, and each is free on an unsecured $50,000 bond. Their trial is scheduled for 9 a.m. March 14.
On Thursday some witnesses before the grand jury were given a one-page list of names of contributors to county and state races. Wheat asked whether they recognized the names and if they were affiliated with Mitsunaga and his stable of donors.
Witnesses were also asked whether Mitsunaga directed the fundraising and illegally reimbursed those who made the contributions, according to sources with knowledge of the investigation.
Kobayashi told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser it was her second time taking questions from Wheat before the grand jury. During her first appearance she was asked about the $250,000 retirement settlement for Louis Kealoha.
Wheat asked witnesses whether Mitsunaga ever asked for anything in return for campaign contributions. Kobayashi told Wheat he did not.
She explained that contributions to political campaigns come from small to large donors.
The highly regulated process is handled by professional political fundraisers, accountants and attorneys who specialize in campaign finance regulations. Often, those fundraising tasks are handled by mainland operatives contracted for the electoral cycle.
The elected official does not keep track of donors who give to campaigns that can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and money never influenced how she voted, Kobayashi told Wheat.
If she believed a plan was a good idea, it received her support, she said.
“It wouldn’t matter if they donated or did not donate. I don’t know what people gave me,” Kobayashi told the Star-Advertiser.
Hanabusa declined comment.
Wheat also asked about Mitsunaga and his associates’ travel patterns. Wheat did not respond to Star-Advertiser requests for comment. Messages left for Mitsunaga’s attorney, Sheri Tanaka, were not immediately returned.
Kobayashi welcomed Wheat’s work and said the people of Honolulu deserve the scrutiny brought by the investigation handled by prosecutors outside of Hawaii.
“We have to start cleaning house. Obviously, there is something wrong,” said Kobayashi.
