HONOLULU — A month before the start of a bribery trial against Honolulu’s former top prosecutor, the judge who has been presiding over the case since 2022 unexpectedly recused himself.
U.S. District Judge J. Michael Seabright issued an order Wednesday morning recusing himself in the case against former Honolulu Prosecuting Attorney Keith Kaneshiro.
Jury selection was scheduled to begin next month in one of Hawaii’s most anticipated criminal trials.
Seabright has presided over the case since a U.S. grand jury indicted Kaneshiro and four others in 2022, alleging that employees of an engineering and architectural firm bribed the prosecutor with campaign donations in exchange for Kaneshiro’s prosecution of a former company employee.
Seabright’s order doesn’t explain his recusal.
All five have pleaded not guilty to one count of conspiracy to defraud the City and County of Honolulu and one count of conspiracy to intimidate the former employee to prevent her from exercising her rights by filing a civil rights lawsuit against the firm.
The first count carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison, the second count 10 years.
The indictment alleges that Mitsunaga &Associates employees, along with an attorney listed as an unindicted co-conspirator, contributed more than $45,000 to Kaneshiro’s reelection campaigns between October 2012 and October 2016.
They allegedly got family members, business partners, employees and contractors to donate as well to get around individual campaign contribution limits.
The former employee targeted with prosecution had been a project architect at Mitsunaga &Associates for 15 years when she was fired without explanation on the same day she expressed disagreement with claims the CEO made against her, court documents said.