Thousands of these documents and emails from the covert Science of Identity political operation have been independently examined by the Washington Post. The content on this website is attributed solely to the site's author.
To win U.S. immigration approvals for Chris Butler's disciples, Tulsi Gabbard's longtime political operative Sunil Khemaney drafted official support letters and lined up Hawaii's political establishment to sign them: the Governor, multiple state department heads, two state senators, and Tulsi Gabbard herself.
In 2013, a Kailua film company called Blue River Productions needed to extend the E-2 investor visa of its owner, Yamuna Brennan, a disciple within Tulsi Gabbard's guru's group, the Science of Identity Foundation. Blue River was no ordinary vendor: it was the company behind much of Tulsi Gabbard's video content and that of Butler's wife, Wai Lana.
The forensic archive shows the network did not simply file an ordinary visa petition. It ran a coordinated lobbying campaign, drafting letters to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and collecting the signatures of Hawaii's most powerful officials.
Sunil Khemaney ghost-drafted the letters, then handed them to officials to sign
Several of the support letters in the archive were not even written by the officials whose names they carry. They were drafted by Sunil Khemaney, marked with instructions for the official to put them on government letterhead, and built around the same talking points about Hawaii's film industry and foreign investment. The draft files prepared for Governor Abercrombie, Film Commissioner Donne Dawson, and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard all list Khemaney as their author. 1
"[To reproduce on official letterhead]… I am writing to express my support for the extension of an E-2 Treaty Investor visa for Yamuna Brennan, principal investor and owner of Blue River Productions, LLC."
Draft support letter prepared in the SIF project office, 2013 1
Former Gov. Abercrombie, state directors, and two senators signed on
The roster of Hawaii officials enlisted to vouch for a single disciple's visa is remarkable.
- Former Gov. Neil Abercrombie
, Governor of Hawaii at the time 2
- Richard C. Lim
, Director, Hawaii Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism 3
- Dwight Takamine
, Director, Hawaii Department of Labor and Industrial Relations 3
- Donne Dawson
, Hawaii Film Office Commissioner 3
- State Sen. Mike Gabbard
, Tulsi Gabbard's father 3
- State Sen. Glenn Wakai
3
- Jim Tollefson
, President and CEO, Chamber of Commerce of Hawaii 3
- Rep. Tulsi Gabbard
, on her congressional office's behalf 4
State department directors, whose agencies regulate labor and economic development, lent the weight of their public offices to a private immigration petition. So did a sitting governor and a member of Congress.
Sunil ran the same play in 2010
The Brennan campaign was not the only one. Three years earlier, in 2010, the same operation gathered U.S. immigration support letters for the permanent-residency petition of another Butler disciple, Chang Xing Liang, collecting them from Hawaii film-industry figures including producer Chris Lee, sound engineer Mark Ulano, and crew member Herb Ault. 5
Hawaii's government officials were mobilized for Tulsi's guru
An E-2 visa is a routine matter handled between an applicant and the federal government. There is nothing routine about a religious leader's operation drafting letters for a governor, two cabinet directors, the state film commissioner, two senators, and a congresswoman, all to benefit a company run by one of his followers, a company that happened to produce that same congresswoman's videos.
It is a snapshot of how deeply Butler's network is woven into Hawaii's halls of power, and how readily that power is mobilized for insiders.
When a guru can summon the signatures of a state's governor and half its government for one disciple's paperwork, the question is not who he knows. It is who works for whom.
