Did Hawaii Officials Lie About Missing Testimony?

Recently, we shared a story about some 700 pieces of pro-gun testimony missing from state records. Officials at the time claimed it was a simple mistake, that a clerk thought the messages were spam and thus didn’t take the appropriate steps.

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At the time, I thought that sounded more than a little fishy. After all, few people submit testimony with emails titled with things like offers for over-the-counter Viagra or other similarly spam-like offerings.

It just didn’t sound right.

Yesterday, a pro-gun activist in Hawaii sent me this video, clearly showing a clerk–reportedly the same clerk who supposedly thought these emails were spam–giving a completely different reason why that testimony was missing.

So which is it? Were officials simply not using that email anymore and failed to set it to automatically inform people that the email address would no longer be checked or did the clerk think it was spam?

It’s either one, the other, or something completely different. It can’t be both.

In the video, the clerk becomes belligerent about why can’t the activists use the capitol website, but that’s not the point. Testimony was submitted in what was published as an approved manner and then never made it into the record. This is problematic in oh-so-many ways, especially because it’s clear that someone is lying. My guess is several someones are lying.

Look, in a lot of places, gun advocates are treated like second class citizens. They’re not real people, at least to anti-gun advocates and lawmakers. There’s no reason to treat them like real citizens or anything, and that looks like what happened here.

Unfortunately for this bunch, the gun rights activists knew they deserved better than that and made a stand.

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However, the voice behind the video, Mr. Andrew Namiki Roberts, tells me that the local media hasn’t seen fit to put anyone’s feet to the fire. Why is that? Again, gun rights advocates don’t count. Not in the anti-gun media’s mind, at least.

Sure, they reported on the missing testimony, but this video was published ten days ago. It should have had time to have been looked at by area media, and there’s nothing, nothing at all.

The Senator and his staff have a lot they need to answer for.

The question is, will they? More than likely, they won’t. They’ll keep on doing what they do and getting away with it so long as they’re selective about who they answer. So long as they keep doing it to the right people, they’ll get a pass. The moment they cross that imaginary line that no one wants to talk about, though, they’ll be destroyed.

They know that, so they’ll keep blowing off people like gun rights activists.

No one should get away with it. This isn’t how our system is supposed to work. They need to be held accountable and required to answer for basically ignoring 700 pieces of testimony until it was too late for it to make any difference.

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