Yes, it’s obvious that Hawaii is covering for “Mr. O’s” butt. They made Bennett jump through a lot of hoops that he shouldn’t haven had to jump through, and he’s a legitimate government official. Butter is right though when she points out that there are statutory requirements for how Hawaii is supposed to handle requests. Their refusals and parsing is very illuminating. There should be no reason for Hawaii to behave as they have. There are statutory ways they could simply provide full disclosure directly to the public and not fool around. Instead of nitpicking at butter or any other skeptics, we should collectively put more pressure on Hawaii to provide full disclosures of the Kenyan Coward™’s records.
I agree with you—something is wrong, and there’s too much smoke for there to be no fire. I just am pessimistic that any amount of grassroots pressure can result in disclosure from the Hawaiian DOH.