Trump’s top voting rights lawyer led L.A. election conspiracy case
Eric Neff’s tenure with the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office ended after he was placed on administrative leave in 2022 amid allegations of misconduct in the case of the CEO of Konnech, a software company that election conspiracy theorists say is in servitude of the Chinese government.
Now, three years later, Neff serves as one of the Trump administration’s top election observers.
Late last year, he began to be named in lawsuits filed by the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and was listed as the “acting chief” in the voting division.
Neff’s appointment, First reported by Mother Jones, It led to renewed scrutiny of his work at the LA County District Attorney’s Office.
The Times interviewed several of Neff’s former colleagues who revealed new details about the misconduct allegations that emerged from the Konnech case and said they were concerned about the appointment to a senior position of someone with virtually no background in federal election law.
Neff led a 2022 investigation into Konnech, a small Michigan company whose software is used by election officials in many major cities. Inside criminal complaint, Neff accused the company’s CEO, Eugene Yu, of fraud and embezzlement, claiming the company stored poll workers’ information on a server based in China, which violated its contract with the L.A. County recorder’s office.
A 2022 statement from the prosecutor’s office said that six weeks after the complaint was filed, prosecutors dropped the case and opened an investigation into “irregularities” and biases in the way evidence against Konnech was presented.
The state paid Konnech $5 million and joined a motion to find Yu actually innocent. As part of a legal solution.
The internal investigation focused on accusations that Neff misled his superiors at the district attorney’s office about the role of election deniers in his investigation, according to two officials with direct knowledge of the case who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
Neff also allegedly withheld information about possible bias in the case from the grand jury, according to two officials.
In a civil lawsuit filed last year, Neff said an internal review by the prosecutor’s office cleared him of wrongdoing. Two officials familiar with the investigation, who spoke on condition of anonymity, disputed Neff’s description of the findings.
Spokesperson for Dist. Lawyer. Nathan Hochman declined to comment on or provide the results of the investigation into Neff, which authorities said was conducted by an outside law firm that prepared a report on the case. Neff’s attorney also did not provide a copy of the report.
A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.
Neff’s attorney, Tom Yu, who is not affiliated with the Konnech CEO, said his client had no obligation to provide the grand jury with background information about the origins of the case.
Neff’s appointment comes as President Trump continues to remake the Justice Department in his image, appointing political stalwarts with no criminal law background as U.S. attorneys in New Jersey and Virginia and seeking to prosecute political enemies like former FBI Director James Comey.
Trump has never relinquished his false claim that he won the 2020 election.
Then LA County Dist. Lawyer. When George Gascón announced the charges against Konnech in 2020, Trump said the progressive prosecutor would be “a national hero on the Right if he gets to the bottom of this aspect of Voting Fraud.”
At the heart of the Konnech case was contract fraud, not voter fraud or ballot rigging. Six weeks after the charges were filed, the case fell apart.
The prosecutor’s office said Neff relied excessively on evidence provided by True the Vote, a group that appeared in a film pushing false Chinese government conspiracies about Konnech and also spreading claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
Gascón initially denied True the Vote’s involvement in the case, but weeks later a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office said a report by the group’s co-founder Gregg Phillips sparked the prosecution. Phillips testified in court in July 2022 that Neff was the first person to contact him about Konnech.
Neff hid True the Vote’s role from senior prosecutors’ office employees, including Gascón, when he presented the case, two officials told The Times.
Gascón declined an interview request, noting that his name is in Neff’s case, which is scheduled to go to trial in early 2026.
Neff’s attorney insisted the case against Konnech was solid.
“Trump was released because he tweeted ‘Go George Go’,” the lawyer said. “That’s why Eugene Yu was released. Because Gascón was so afraid he would lose votes.”
Calls and emails to an attorney who previously represented Eugene Yu were not returned.
Neff claimed in his lawsuit that he had evidence that “Konnech used third-party contractors based in China and failed to comply with security procedures” to protect L.A. County poll workers’ data. The evidence was not added as evidence to the case.
A DOJ spokesman declined to disclose Neff’s job duties. His name also appears in a series of lawsuits filed in recent months against states that refused to turn over voter registration lists to the Trump administration.
Neff is also involved in a lawsuit against the Fulton County clerk’s office in Georgia seeking records related to the 2020 election, records show.
“We will not allow states to jeopardize the integrity and effectiveness of elections by refusing to comply with our federal election laws,” he said. Lawyer. Gen. Harmeet Dhillon, the California conservative who now leads the civil rights division, said in a recent statement. “If states will not fulfill their duty to protect the integrity of the vote, we will.”
Dhillon, through a Justice Department spokesman, declined to comment.
According to the Justice Department’s website, the voting division “enforces the civil provisions of federal laws protecting the right to vote, including the Voting Rights Act.”
Neff does not appear to have a history of working on cases involving federal election law. He first became a Los Angeles County district attorney in 2013 and spent years handling local criminal cases out of the Pomona courthouse. In 2020, he was promoted and reassigned to the Public Integrity Section, which investigates corruption issues, according to his lawsuit.
While there he handled only two election-related prosecutions. One of these was the Konnech case. The other involved allegations of election fraud against a Compton city council member.
In August 2021, Democrat Isaac Galvan was charged with conspiracy to commit election fraud after he allegedly tried to manipulate voters from outside his council district to vote for him. Galvan won the race by only one vote, but launched from office when the judge found that at least four improper votes had been cast.
Galvan’s criminal case is still ongoing; He recently pleaded guilty to charges in a separate corruption and bribery case filed in federal court. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles said there was no overlap between the prosecutor’s election fraud case and the bribery case against Galvan. Federal prosecutors are not reviewing Konnech’s case, the spokesman said.
Court records show Neff was involved in Galvan’s L.A. County case, but the investigation was handled by a more senior attorney.
Justin Levitt, a constitutional law professor at Loyola Law School who served in the civil rights division during the Obama administration, said division chiefs normally have decades of experience in the law they are supposed to oversee.
“The biggest problem with someone with Neff’s background is the giant screaming red flag that warrants prosecution based on unreliable evidence,” Levitt said. “This is not something any prosecutor should do.”
Yu, Neff’s attorney, scoffed at the notion that his client was not experienced enough for his new role in the Trump administration or was singled out for his involvement in the Konnech case.
“Eric took the job because he qualified for the job. He didn’t take the job for any other reason. He took the job because he is an excellent advocate,” Yu said. “I think the Department of Justice is very lucky to have Eric.”
Times Staff Writer Seema Mehta contributed to this report.
