We all seen the news of Kevin Hulten being sentenced for destroying public records, most folks thought it was a “sweetheart deal” and it was.
Hulten was a former journalist at the Lake Stevens Journal, and no matter what your personal opinion is of him he made many valid points in his “investigations” of many county officials but it got lost in all of the wrong he was doing and all of the people he was covering for.Just take a look at his investigations of Mike Hope who was running against Aaron Reardon, turns out he was right about him
In order to understand I think it’s very important to read what he had written with an open mind. The other local newspaper would never link to his online blogs but we will here so our readers can make their own decisions.
The premise is always that he was using a false press pass and they always took swipes at his monicker of citizen journalist. He is in fact an award winning journalist & the Journal still stands by him as relevant even after the staff tried to push the LSJ editor into a corner.
I have interacted with Mr Hulten and I find him to be a bright articulate person. He had such a great future ahead of him, I think he still can but he seemed to have fallen from the moment he associated himself with Senator Hobbs in 2006. Then he seemed to jump from the frying pan into the fire by aligning himself with Aaron Reardon.
I have read literally 100’s of 1000’s of public records concerning Snohomish County elected officials and employees and sadly I have to tell you it seems only 2 people even knew what was going on in regards to the law and citizens matters. Kevin Hulten and Gary Haakenson. I even went as far as to ask Mr Hulten why he was anyone aide or flunky when he was clearly the only one who knew what was going on at any level in the county. He sadly still thinks these folks have an alliance to him and in some respects they may.
Kevin goes from small town prodigy, award winning journalist, to working with Senator Hobbs, then he takes a position with Aaron Reardon at the exec’s office along with Senator Hobbs brother-in-law Jon Rudicil & they create a bunch of websites and start requesting records about other SnoCo employees and elected officials which starts a firestorm in those offices and with the Herald who calls out for “a digital posse” to catch whomever is doing this. This decision was his undoing.
His ultimate downfall was homemade movies made with his girlfriend on county computers. It should be noted that when you ask King County and the WSP for the records of their investigation into Hulten Rudicil and Reardon they include that as well and they don’t redact anything so most of the info you obtain can not be used legally.
He then tried to claim “whistleblower” status, which of course was denied and possibly the reason he got such a good deal in court because he clearly qualified as a whistleblower, investigator, citizen, and a journalist. Even the judge in his case was clearly miffed as to why the prosecutor gave him such a good deal, while his attorney was just sitting there collecting tax-payer monies for his defense, it seemed the prosecutor was advocating for Hulten even more then his own defense.
