A free press is supposed to scrutinize the powerful. To Tulsi Gabbard's guru, "Jagad Guru" Chris Butler, Hawaii's journalists were a problem to be managed. His forensic archive shows a sustained campaign, run by operatives including Sunil Khemaney and Allison Hoen, to discredit and drown out the local reporters who covered the group.

Fake commenters flooded Honolulu Civil Beat

When Civil Beat published stories the network disliked, the operation answered with fabricated voices. Allison Hoen, who coordinated the commenting team, acknowledged in writing that the profiles were not real, even as they posted as supposedly independent local readers and accused Civil Beat's reporters of lying.

The Honolulu Star-Advertiser dismissed as sore-loser "Mufi" backers

When the Honolulu Star-Advertiser's reporting touched Tulsi Gabbard, the operation's scripted response was not to engage the facts but to impugn the paper's motives, recycling the claim that it was simply bitter over a past election.

The Maui News painted as a rival's hatchet man

Maui News coverage got the same treatment: rather than rebut it, the operation cast the paper as a tool of Tulsi's political opponents and, again, a sore loser still loyal to Hannemann.

Columnists like Dave Shapiro and TV stations were targets too

The operation prepared scripted comments to swarm columnists like Dave Shapiro of the Star-Advertiser, ⁴ and turned on Hawaii's television stations as well. After Hawaii News Now covered the fatal Lanikai boating accident involving a Butler disciple, the network branded the station's reporting a "hit piece" and "biased, sensationalist" coverage, and leaned on its executives directly. ⁵

Butler organized campaigns to manufacture opinion and discredit reporters

What the archive documents is a coordinated effort to manufacture fake public opinion, smear named reporters, and delegitimize the newsrooms whose job is to hold power accountable, all on behalf of a religious leader and the congresswoman he mentored.

A press that can be flooded with fake voices and bullied into silence cannot do its job. That is exactly the point.