The Threat Report: Counsel, Safety, and the Leave-Hawaiʻi Question

A public accountability letter by Ekewaka Lono.

I told Audrey L.E. Stanley that Gene and Rita Hartmann had threatened me. The words I reported were:

“Stay away from [name withheld].”

“Or you will get whacked.”

Stanley was my assigned counsel. I tried to explain the condition and the context. I recall that she interrupted me and dismissed the report, in substance, as “no big deal.” Within a relatively short period, she told me there might be a way to resolve the pending matter if I left Hawaiʻi. She presented the idea as tentative and not her own. I received no written terms.

That sequence is the substance of this letter: a reported threat, the response I received from counsel, and a later communication that made leaving the island part of a possible resolution.

I am publishing my account of those conversations. The concern is what happened to a safety report when it reached the lawyer assigned to represent me—and why the next proposed way out involved my departure rather than an explained response to the threat.

A Threat With a Condition

The Hartmanns were not strangers whose names surfaced in an abstract network map. I knew them through the Haleʻiwa residential environment in which I was living. My account places them in the front unit of the duplex where I rented the back unit.

The threat occurred during the pretrial period. In my account, they delivered the words calmly and quietly during an in-person social encounter. I understood the statement as a death threat designed to stop my inquiries. “Stay away” defined the prohibited conduct. “Whacked” supplied the consequence.

The name in the quotation is withheld. I understood it to refer to a public figure. The allegation concerns what Gene and Rita Hartmann said; it does not establish that the person they named issued, authorized, knew about, or participated in the threat.

I also recall Gene reframing the discussion the following day as a “murder mystery.” I told him I would tell everyone. In my interpretation, that reframing attempted to recast a threat as a harmless conversation. The statement and my response are firsthand recollections; that account of its purpose is my inference.

The housing, room-inquiry, and private-message history appears in Before the Tax Office. It explains how these people and conversations entered my life. It does not turn a room applicant, a reference, a relative, or a public figure into a participant in the threat.

What Stanley Heard From Me

I tried to report the threat to Stanley while she was representing me. I wanted to explain who had spoken, the condition attached to the warning, and why I took it seriously. My recollection is that she cut the explanation short and responded dismissively.

The consequence for me was immediate: the person I expected to help me bring a threat into an institutional record did not give me an explained safety response. That is the failure I am describing from my position as her client.

I do not claim personal access to Stanley’s internal notes or supervisor conversations. Whether she made a note, consulted someone, or took an action outside my presence belongs to the file. What I can report directly is the attempt I made, the interruption, the words I heard, and the absence of an explanation to me of what would be done.

The file matters because it can identify whether the threat entered the institution at all. A contact note, a supervisor consultation, a referral, or an explanation of a decision would give this report a history beyond my memory.

The Leave-Hawaiʻi Communication

Within a relatively short period after that report, Stanley told me there might be a way to resolve the matter if I left Hawaiʻi. I retain the tentative wording because it is what I remember, not because the communication is unimportant.

She indicated that the concept was not her idea and came from the prosecution or related institutional actors. That is my account of what she communicated; it does not identify which person originated it. I received no written proposal and no explanation sufficient to distinguish a formal offer from an informal discussion or a suggestion that had not become an offer.

The questions are specific: who said it first, who relayed it, what did leaving require, what would happen to the matter, and what advice was given about accepting or refusing?

A client cannot evaluate an unexplained condition by guessing at its source or legal effect. The correspondence and notes should establish what was actually on the table.

The Convergence I Am Identifying

My inference is that the two communications converged on my removal from the local environment. The private threat told me to stop crossing a boundary. The later counsel communication made departure from Hawaiʻi part of a possible institutional resolution.

That is an accountability argument about the practical result. It is not a report that I witnessed Stanley coordinating with the Hartmanns or that I know the originator of the relocation concept. The factual basis for my argument is the threat I received, what I reported to counsel, her response, and what she later told me.

Leaving the place does not answer a threat report. It moves the person reporting the problem. My criticism is that the safety issue reached an institutional gatekeeper and the next described route out centered on me leaving, without an explained record of how the threat itself was handled.

An account of those decisions is owed independently of whether the private speakers and the institutional participants shared a plan.

The Wider Pressure Before Trial

The threat was part of a period in which I was trying to report pressure from both private and official encounters.

In November 2015, during an in-person attempted interrogation with tax investigator James Yuen, a man identified to me as a New Jersey State Police organized-crime investigator invoked my childhood associates and told me he was going to give me a “colonoscopy.” I experienced that as a threat to use invasive investigation and my past against me. The agency identity, assignment, and interview record are independently retrievable questions. The words and encounter are my report.

In May or June 2017, shortly before trial, a man I understood at the time to be an associate of the public figure named in the earlier threat and identify in my source account as “Kevin” approached me outside Kahala Whole Foods. My account is that he threatened career destruction if I continued talking about the Hartmann threat and related conduct. He invoked a prominent technology investor’s name. That is reported name-dropping, not evidence that the investor directed, approved, or knew of the warning.

I understood the timing and condition as pressure against continued disclosure before trial. That is my interpretation. I do not claim in this letter that Stanley received the later Whole Foods report or knew what the speaker said. Her accountability here concerns the threat report and the resolution communication I attribute to her.

What the Representation Required

Hawaiʻi’s professional-conduct rules require diligence under Rule 1.3 and communication sufficient for informed client decisions under Rule 1.4. Rule 1.4(a)(6) specifically addresses communicating a received settlement or plea proposal. The classification of the leave-Hawaiʻi concept matters to that specific provision; the duty to explain advice and keep the client informed is broader.

The public questions concern conduct, documentation, and communication: listen to the report, identify what the client is describing, assess the safety issue, explain the available options, and preserve what was decided. This letter alleges a failure in the response I received. It reports no adjudicated violation.

A conflict allegation would require an identified limiting interest and evidence of its effect. I do not substitute later judicial service, institutional employment, or social proximity for that evidence.

A Separate Courtroom Issue

Kanemoto’s later mock-pistol closing argument is addressed in The Hypothetical Gun. It is a separate professional-responsibility issue at a later stage. This letter does not allege coordination between Stanley and Kanemoto or use one person’s conduct as proof of the other’s.

A Later Attempt to Report the Same Threat

After 2022, years after Stanley’s representation, I again attempted to report the Hartmann threat to HPD. I identify Officer Brandt as the officer who prevented another officer from receiving it. That is my firsthand account of a separate, later intake event; it does not establish what Stanley knew or did years earlier. The same underlying threat was the subject of another attempt to create an institutional record. The later reporting account and police-record retrieval paths are set out in Before the Tax Office.

The Record and the Public Responsibility

The institutional files have not been independently authenticated and published with this letter. That distinction does not erase my account. It identifies who holds the material that can answer it.

The Judiciary’s published First Circuit per diem list lists Audrey L.E. Stanley. This letter concerns her earlier representation, not an allegation about her conduct on the bench. The public interest is how a lawyer who later serves in a judicial role handled a client’s safety report and an unexplained departure condition.

Publication Status and Response

This public accountability letter supersedes the narrower draft complaint as my published account. The draft has not been submitted to the Hawaiʻi Office of Disciplinary Counsel. No disciplinary authority finding is being reported.

Stanley, the Office of the Public Defender, and any participant with records may respond through the site’s Corrections Policy. No response obtained specifically for this letter is represented here. Relevant notes, terms, or explanations should be incorporated with their source identified.

I reported a threat. I was told it was no big deal. I was later told leaving Hawaiʻi might resolve the pending matter. Those are the events I am putting before the public, and those are the decisions for which I am asking an account.

The header image is an editorial illustration, not documentary evidence of a reported threat or conversation. Image credit: generated editorial artwork for Oahu Underground / GTCode, October 1, 2026.