Grand Jury Indicts Hawaii Lieutenant Governor Sylvia Luke After Lobbyist Bragged About Details of Buy Off

Hawaii Democrats locked down families and businesses in the name of COVID safety.

Now a grand jury says one of them was pocketing bribes the whole time.

Sylvia Luke just found out a lobbyist's bragging came back to indict her.

Lobbyist Bragged About Buying Off Hawaii's Second-Highest Democrat

An Oahu grand jury handed up a 12-count indictment against Hawaii Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke on Friday.

The charges include criminal conspiracy to commit bribery, bribery, and falsifying candidate committee reports.

Prosecutors say Luke took a $35,000 bribe in 2022 while she chaired the state House Finance Committee.

The alleged payoff came from lobbyist Tobi Solidum, who wanted state cash flowing to COVID-19 testing sites run by the National Kidney Foundation of Hawaii.

According to the indictment, Solidum handed Luke two $5,000 campaign checks during a January 2022 meeting at Morton's Steakhouse.

They allegedly talked state funding for the testing sites right there over dinner.

Solidum didn't even try to hide what he thought he was buying.

He told another state lawmaker, "All I gotta do is give her more money now."

That's the lobbyist's own words, laid out in a grand jury indictment against a sitting lieutenant governor.

Luke isn't the only one facing charges.

Former state Rep. Ryan Yamane, Hawaii Department of Transportation official Ford Fuchigami, and former Public Utilities Commission chair Leo Asuncion were indicted alongside her.

Solidum was hit with four counts of conspiracy to commit bribery and three counts of bribery.

Luke's bail was set at $80,000.

Josh Green Signed a Corruption Fix Weeks Before His Own Running Mate Got Indicted

This scandal didn't come out of nowhere.

The investigation grew directly out of the federal bribery case that already sent former state Rep. Ty Cullen and former state Sen. Kalani English to prison.

For six months, the state attorney general's corruption unit followed that trail straight to the State Capitol.

Legal experts say it's already the largest bribery scandal Hawaii has ever seen.

Just weeks before Luke's indictment, Gov. Josh Green signed a law stretching the state's bribery statute of limitations from three years to nine.

Green stood at a podium and talked about restoring trust in government.

He did it while his own second-in-command sat under an active corruption investigation tied to conduct from 2022, conduct that would have aged out under the old law.

Green isn't demanding accountability from the outside.

He's presiding over a Democrat bribery culture so entrenched that his state needed new laws just to keep prosecutors from running out the clock.

Now Green wants Luke gone.

"The Lieutenant Governor needs to consider formally resigning to address this matter," Green said, adding that it was time for the state to move forward.

Attorney General Anne Lopez struck a similarly careful tone.

Lopez said her office has "a commitment to following the facts to where they lead," no matter how long the case took.

Luke has not commented publicly on the charges.

She took an unpaid leave of absence back in April and quietly ended her reelection campaign the same month.

Green has already installed Comptroller Keith Regan as acting lieutenant governor.

This is what one-party rule looks like up close.

Democrats controlled the testing contracts, the campaign checks, and the silence, until a federal case cracked it open from the outside.

COVID-19 wasn't just a lockdown excuse for Hawaii Democrats.

It was a $35,000 payday funneled through a steakhouse dinner and a lobbyist too arrogant to keep his mouth shut.

Every masked mandate, every shuttered small business, every parent locked out of a classroom happened while the people running the show treated pandemic contracts like a personal ATM.

Bribery cases usually die because nobody talks.

Solidum already talked, bragging to another lawmaker about buying Luke off, and prosecutors put it in the indictment.

Hawaii voters elected Luke to the second-highest office in the state in 2022, the same year prosecutors say she was cashing checks tied to a state contract.

They didn't find out about any of it until federal agents started pulling a different thread entirely.

Sylvia Luke may still get her day in court.

But the lobbyist who allegedly bought her already told on both of them.

Sources:

• Lowell Cauffiel, "Grand Jury Indicts Hawaii Lt. Governor for COVID Testing in Alleged 'Pay-to-Play' Scheme," Breitbart, July 26, 2026.
• "Hawaii Lt Gov Sylvia Luke Indicted on Bribery and Conspiracy Charges," Fox News, July 25, 2026.
• "Hawaii's Democratic Lieutenant Governor Indicted in Bribery Investigation," Washington Examiner, July 25, 2026.
• "Hawaii Democrat Indicted for Alleged Bribery Scheme over COVID Contract," Blaze Media, July 25, 2026.