HIRA News
NEW LEADER TRASHES PREDECESSOR: New GOP Honcho Tells Judge ‘Throw the Book at Ousted Officers’
As the highest ranking Republican Party officer in Hawaii, Hannemann told the judge in no uncertain terms: “The body of officers who represent the Hawaii Republican Party presently are appalled at the unprofessional, abusive and dismissive interactions by the former Party officers,” while refusing to deny that McKay, Bieler, Chang, “Bingo”, and Savaiinaea committed “the alleged acts of defamation, tortious interference and civil conspiracy alleged in this complaint.” Moreover, though the Hawaii GOP is presently a co-defendant in the $750,000 lawsuit, Hannemann appears to acknowledge that the named defendants engaged in “Defamation & Character Assassination, Neglect of Duty and Political Retaliation, and Failure of Leadership Response.”
Hannemann’s Letter to State Judge
This is where non-lawyer Art Hannemann significantly expands on Everett’s more narrow lawsuit – a complaint which provided hundreds of pages of evidence to support her charges but didn’t actually connect the dots to show how the defendants allegedly manipulated processes to deny Everett from participating in the recent state convention at which new party officers were elected three months ago, such as Hannemann ousting defendant Tamara McKay for the top spot. Hannemann’s court filing unmistakably referred to that manipulation as “conspiratorial gridlock at the highest level of our local party leadership at the time,” an allegation which takes Everett’s case well beyond the defamation issue. Indeed, should Everett file an amended complaint which incorporates the same arguments levelled by Hannemann concerning the alleged rigging of the state convention through manipulating Everett (and presumably others), the defendants might be less confident that her lawsuit as presently constituted will be thrown out. Perhaps this letter was meant by Hannemann as a stalling tactic for the court’s deliberations on Everett v HRP as well as a signal from Hannemann to Everett to file a stronger and more comprehensive lawsuit to go with the hundreds of pages of documentary evidence already provided to the judge which illustrate far more questionable activity by the defendants than mere defamation.
The Lawsuit That Started It All: Everett v. HRP (2025)
In any event, with HRP formally taking the position that past party officers named in the civil suit are all guilty of everything Everett is claiming – including the alleged election interference leading up to and including the state convention which appeared to incite the alleged defamation –- it’s entirely possible that Hannemann’s declarations could have two outcomes which put the defendants at greater risk. First, Everett’s case stands a better chance of succeeding in court than before. Second, the alleged wrongdoing could lead to the ouster of these same defendants from their currently held positions in the party as well as the termination of their party membership should the allegations documented by Everett be used in internal disciplinary processes being put in place by Hannemann and his loyalists.
Could this happen? DEFINITELY. In his letter to Judge Nichols, Hannemann tries hard to impress the judge with a ‘breaking news story from inside the party’ which makes no bones about HRP itself acting on the specifics of Everett’s complaints about McKay and the other defendants – problems previously dismissed and ignored by those party officers – to help Everett get justice from the party. Mufi’s cousin Art writes: “In reality, the new HRP leadership has moved quickly to establish a new Discipline Committee (with 6 members already appointed and ready to strike), whose charge it will be to address matters just like this case, beginning with the formal complaint filed internally by the Plaintiff on May 23, 2025 . . . (T)he actions taken by the HRP’s new leadership very intentionally create a pathway for the due process that was denied the Plaintiff back in late May.” In other words, both the state court and the state party should punish these defendants.
THE PURGE BEGINS: One of the defendants who might be in trouble with Hannemann’s new “Discipline Committee” is high-ranking party officer Nolan Chang who holds two top posts simultaneously; as chairman of the Honolulu county GOP as well as national committeeman for the state GOP, one of two representatives of Hawaii Republicans on the Republican National Committee. Chang’s counterpart is national committeewoman Laura Nakanelua, whom Hanneman claims has been persisting in “holding leadership accountable” by utilizing “her connection to the Republican National Committee to seek guidance on behalf of the Plaintiff” after suffering from actions which Nakanelua deems to be “not acceptable.” From what HIRA News has learned, there is no love lost between Chang and Nakanelua, both of whom were elected to their current four-year terms on the RNC in 2024.
Notably, Hannemann cites HIRA News’ investigation and reporting of this lawsuit as solid proof that McKay, Bieler, “Bingo” and other party officers negatively impacted Christina Everett in a number of ways. The new state chair quotes Everett in her contention that, “The tone and content of (HIRA’s) media inquiry show that my past was deliberately re-circulated and weaponized by certain members of the Hawaii GOP leadership in order to damage my public image and candidacy.” Speaking for the new leadership of HRP, Hannemann tells Judge Nichols that, “Once again, we call the Court’s attention to the Plaintiff’s own sworn statement that her past was weaponized by ‘certain members of the Hawaii GOP leadership.’”
Plaintiff and GOP candidate Christina Everett with Art’s Cousin Mufi Hannemann
https://archives.starbulletin.com/content/Woman_gets_6_months_for_importing_illegal_fireworks
MEET THE NEW BOSS, SAME AS THE OLD BOSS: Laughably promising the judge with mock sincerity that a Hannemann-led HRP would always empower “the Party’s governing State Committee” to deal with problem party officers, Hannemann insincerely decries how, “This conspiratorial gridlock among a tight circle of the HRP’s top leaders at the time kept a close hold on the challenges the Plaintiff was experiencing and insulating it from the general oversight of the Party’s governing State Committee, which could only convene subject to the call of co-defendant McKay.” While Hannemann has yet to actually give the State Committee the very power which party by-laws grant that governing body – malevolently choosing since being elected state chair to hobble and restrict that power through his (and Shirlene Ostrov’s) own version of ‘conspiratorial gridlock’ even as Hannemann freely admits his knowledge to the judge that “the Party’s State Committee exercises general oversight of the Party’s affairs” – there’s no denying that Mufi’s cousin strategically aligns himself and the new HRP against this alleged abuse of power by McKay and her co-defendants – abuse which left aspiring candidate and convention delegate Everett feeling thrown to the wolves by party leaders.
As HIRA News has reported many times, when Tamara McKay and her team were in control of the Hawaii GOP, party officers spent much of their time refusing to do their jobs, while engaging in naval gazing, self-dealing and other corrupt and wasteful practices. Not only does it appear Hannemann agrees with the assessment and reporting of HIRA News about McKay and company, the new state chair takes it several steps further by telling the judge that the “Hawaii Republican Party does not adopt an adversarial posture and is not institutionally aligned against the Plaintiff’s complaint.” The letter to the judge goes even further to throw the defendants under the bus: “(W)e do vehemently contend that the alleged misconduct is confined to the specific individually-named co-defendants, whose actions were conducted outside of the color of their authority as elected officers, were not authorized and are not condoned by the Hawaii Republican Party.”
ALL IN THE FAMILY: Mufi Hannemann with “Republican” Sen. Kurt Fevella and Mufi’s cousin Art
Of course, one serious problem at this point in the case is that Hannemann is not an attorney and no company or organization is permitted to be represented ‘pro se’ by anyone but a licensed attorney. Seeing right through this gambit, the judge has every reason to toss out Hannemann’s ‘hail Mary’ pass as a cheap attempt to get HRP dropped as a co-defendant through dumping all the blame on individuals and accepting zero responsibility as an organization; not to mention the dubious ‘pro se’ filing of a letter from the financially-motivated party chair who doesn’t want to see Christina Everett bankrupting the party as she seeks $750,000 in damages. The other problem is that companies and organizations often have a difficult time getting off the hook for bad management, since those very organizations put the bad leaders in charge . . . and the organizations usually have the deep pockets to pay plaintiffs in lawsuits, rather than the officers themselves. Surely, Mr. Hannemann and his team would love to turn the page and start fresh. But, frankly, inheriting problems (including legal ones) nearly always comes with the territory of being the new CEO.
Still, in his amusing courtroom cosplay as ‘general counsel’ for HRP, Hannemann tries to kick his fellow defendants while they are down with this unmistakable final summation: “For these reasons, the Hawaii Republican Party actually supports the Plaintiff’s claim against the individually-named co-defendants, while strongly disagreeing that the HRP as an organizational entity was participatory or complicit, and therefore should not be included as a co-defendant.” In case the judge doesn’t get the message, Hannemann calls the alleged misdeeds of McKay and associates “unsanctioned acts of rogue former leaders.”
Defendants Nolan Chang, Teri Savaiinaea and Tamara McKay in court recently
While HIRA News is far from impressed with the new Hannemann regime, it must be said that Tamara McKay’s tenure was marked by incompetence, internal sabotage, fraud, and appeasement of radical leftist groups, rather than building a strong Republican base in Hawaii. Instead of standing up to corruption and advancing conservative policies, McKay enabled the same insiders who have long crippled the HRP’s credibility. Whether Tamara McKay and her team were desperately rigging the state convention delegate roster to get McKay reelected and whether their dissemination of Everett’s criminal history amounts to defamation may or may not get adjudicated in state court before Judge Steven Nichols in the days and weeks ahead, you can be sure that the new Hannemann regime will be true to its word to seek ‘discipline’ against their predecessors and should be taken at their word. Not because they want to do the right thing, but because the ‘reward your friends and punish your enemies’ culture is alive and well at the Hawaii GOP. Otherwise, how could extremely corrupt and still unpunished political thugs like Shirlene Ostrov, Steve Yoder, Bob McDermott, Sheila Walker, Mary Smart and Boyd Ready get HANDPICKED by Art Hannemann to control the party for the next two years knowing the horrible things we all know about those people thanks to reporting from HIRA News? Isn’t the pot calling the kettle black by attempting to differentiate between these rival factions led in 2025 by Hannemann and McKay?!? If we’ve learned one thing from these party factions over the past few decades – there’s PLENTY of corruption to go around in running HRP. That’s why Hawaii Democrats sleep so well at night.
What’s particularly tricky about the politics of this situation is that HRP’s Hannemann and McDermott have now politically embraced Christina Everett, no matter what. Time will tell if the Hawaii GOP and its members are well served by enthusiastically backing a convicted felon, which could easily give rise to a Democrat counter-argument that island Republicans are fresh out of high quality candidates with impressive records of accomplishment which don’t include criminal activity. We’ll see if lending the party’s ‘good name’ in court and political ‘clout’ in the community to 2026 state house candidate and convicted aerial fireworks smuggler Everett is the right way to unseat two-term Democrat incumbent Cory Chun; who represents a district just five short miles away from the New Year’s Day illegal aerial fireworks tragedy that took so many lives while disfiguring so many others. All new political problems could lie ahead which make current legal problems seem rather small. We’ll see.
Ethically challenged and progressive HRP Vice Chair “RINO Bob” McDermott supporting Everett at her recent fundraiser
