Who is Sunil Khemaney

According to his LinkedIn and public business profiles, Sunil Khemaney lives in Kaneohe, Hawaii and graduated from USC with a B.S. in Business Administration (1977–1981). Those profiles list multiple roles across Butler and Wai Lana's organizations. ¹ Tulsi Gabbard has described him as "an uncle." ⁴

The 2014 India trip: Sunil ran the operation

In December 2014, Tulsi Gabbard traveled to India on an official MECEA (Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act) congressional delegation. Sunil Khemaney is in the trip documents from start to finish. He arrived in Delhi before Gabbard and departed after her; his contact number sits on the official itinerary alongside Gabbard's own. ⁵ He had editor access to the official itinerary, an Indian government document prepared by the Ministry of External Affairs, alongside Tulsi's House staff and Tulsi herself. ⁶

Sunil tracked what foreign governments gave Tulsi

The trip's official "India To Dos 2014" task spreadsheet assigned most tasks to Emily, Gabbard's House staffer. But the ethics-compliance tasks, the ones tracking what foreign governments gave a U.S. representative, went to Sunil. ⁷

Sunil Khemaney, Wai Lana's American business manager and Butler's money man, was officially handling congressional ethics compliance for a U.S. representative's foreign-government trip. He tracked what foreign governments gave her, tracked what they spent on her, and sent the official itinerary and expense information to her congressional office.

The context matters. At the time of the 2014 trip, Sunil's close Science of Identity associate Allan Tibby was facing money-laundering charges in Chennai for his role in the QNET pyramid scheme, an alleged fraud exceeding $170 million with more than 32,000 documented victims; Tibby never faced the charges in India. ⁸ In 2016, Wai Lana, whose American operations Sunil manages, received India's Padma Shri award. ⁹ Gabbard had opposed a 2013 House resolution criticizing Modi's treatment of religious minorities and publicly called the U.S. visa ban on Modi a "great blunder." ¹⁰

The Hong Kong network

Four people built and run the Wai Lana operation. They knew each other from Hong Kong in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

The man with no title

In 2019, a Honolulu Civil Beat reporter covering Gabbard's presidential campaign noticed Khemaney, "quiet, mustachioed," handing out Tulsi 2020 business cards with his name printed on them but the job title left blank. ¹² He traveled with Gabbard during the 2020 campaign, was with her in Iowa right after she announced, and helped organize her India trips "to bolster her popularity in that country and with Indian Americans." ¹²

When the Wall Street Journal reported on Gabbard's connections to Science of Identity and the QI Group, it was Khemaney who steered the PR damage control, even though he did not formally work for the firm doing it. ⁴

Follow the money

The Wai Lan Yoga Trust, where Sunil serves as trustee, granted $10,000 to the Hindu American Foundation and $16,000 to the Lotus Garden Meditation Center in 2021. The trust's California charity registration and Franchise Tax Board status have both been revoked. ¹³

The smoking gun: one email, March 2015

Butler rarely acted in his own name. He gave the orders, and a handful of trusted operatives carried them out. Sunil was one of them, translating Butler's directives into emails, payments, and political strategy. To see how the operation actually worked, watch a single order travel from Butler's mouth to Tulsi's professional political team. One email from March 2015 captures exactly that.

Butler's rule was simple: anyone who questioned him as Tulsi's guru, or questioned his influence over her, was to be attacked as Hinduphobic. The forensic database holds 20 transcripts from March 2015 alone. Here is what he was dictating in the days around Sunil's email.

What Sunil sent, and at whose direction

At 12:53 AM on March 13, 2015, one day after Butler's "anti-Hindu bigotry" directive, Sunil emailed Tulsi's professional political team. He opened by naming who set it in motion:

The body of the email mirrors Butler's language almost word for word:

He then laid out four strategic options for handling the Civil Beat inquiry. Every one was about controlling the narrative. The word "honest" does not appear anywhere in the email.

Who received it

This was not an internal note. Sunil sent Butler's playbook to the heart of Tulsi's professional Democratic operation.

At Tulsi's direction, Sunil was selling Butler's playbook to Obama's ad agency, Howard Dean's campaign manager, and a major Democratic pollster.

The language gives it away

Put Butler's transcripts and Sunil's email side by side, from the same week, and the source of the script is obvious.

The language Sunil uses mirrors Butler's transcripts from the same week because he was executing Butler's playbook. And the email puts Tulsi herself on the record: "Tulsi asked me to pass on what we discussed." She was not a bystander to Butler's operation.

Butler gave the orders. Sunil carried them out. Tulsi directed it. One email shows all three at once.

Why this matters

Tulsi Gabbard was appointed Director of National Intelligence in 2025, holding the highest security clearances in the U.S. government and overseeing 18 intelligence agencies. The man she called "an uncle," who ran her congressional trips, handled her money, and tracked what foreign governments gave her, manages the American operations of a business empire built on the Chinese Communist Party's state television.

Butler's money man was formally assigned to track what foreign governments gave a future Director of National Intelligence, and he had editor access to her official Indian government itinerary.