Eric Neff was run out of his job as a prosecutor in Los Angeles County after uncovering evidence that pollworker data was leaked to China. His investigation, once touted by liberal DA George Gascon, was dismissed after President Trump indicated his support for it. Neff was put on leave and given a less-prestigious assignment. He was later cleared of any wrongdoing by an outside investigator. Now, Neff has been hired by the federal government, and media are insinuating that he’s an unqualified political hack, not a legitimate prosecutor. What’s the real story?
Neff Uncovered a Crime After Being Tipped Off by a Conservative Advocate
Eric Neff was a deputy district attorney at the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office in 2022. He was assigned to the Public Integrity Division, which investigates corruption, and had been there for two years, when he heard claims that a pollworker data in Los Angeles had been leaked to China.
Neff heard the claims from True the Vote, a conservative vote-monitoring organization whose stated objective is stopping voter fraud. The group has repeatedly falsely claimed that Donald Trump won the 2020 election. Gregg Phillips, a board member of True the Vote, claimed on social media in 2022 that his associates had discovered misconduct by Konnech, a poll worker management software company. Konnech’s software is designed to recruit and train election workers, handle their payroll, and assign them to jobs. This software was used in Los Angeles County in the 2020 elections, including the presidential election. Konnech agreed to securely maintain pollworker data and ensure that access to the data was limited to Americans. Despite this, Phillips alleged that Konnech had stored data on a Chinese server and allowed the Chinese government to access it. Konnech denied the claims and sued True the Vote. Phillips said the discovery had been made by two associates who hacked Konnech’s servers. He was unwilling to identify the “associates” and was jailed for contempt of court. He spent nine days in federal jail until he was ordered released by the Fifth Circuit in November 2022.
Meanwhile Neff, acting on the tip from True the Vote, assigned investigators to determine whether pollworker data had been stolen. Investigators learned that Konnech’s “PollChief” application has its data sources “resolve” to a Chinese IP address. “District Attorney investigators found that in contradiction to the contract, information was stored on servers in the People’s Republic of China,” according to George Gascon, LA County’s liberal district attorney. Investigators executed a search warrant at Konnech’s headquarters, seized evidence, and developed an employee as a cooperating witness. They did not find that the crime had any impact on the tabulation of votes and did not alter election results.
District Attorney George Gascon’s enthusiasm for the case would be short-lived. President Trump retweeted a post from the Washington Examiner about the affair, falsely connecting it to voting fraud, and lauding Gascon, a political liberal and Trump opponent. Trump said, “Go, George, Go!” and that he would become a “National hero on the Right if he got to the bottom of this aspect of the Voting Fraud.”
Meanwhile, Konnech sued True the Vote for defamation, among other things, on September 12, 2022. They denied the claims, saying “[a]ll of Konnech’s U.S. customer data is secured and stored exclusively on protected computers located within the United States.” The complaint provides a detailed recitation of the True the Vote’s claims about Konnech.
But the criminal investigation continued. After the suit, and the President’s posts, Eugene Yu, the CEO of Konnech, was charged on October 13, 2022. Yu immigrated to the U.S. from China in the 1980s and became an American citizen in 1997. The complaint was reviewed and approved by Neff’s “entire chain of command.” Other sources say Gregg Phillips, who had made the controversial claims, testified before the grand jury that indicted Yu.
Criminal Charges Must Be Supported by Evidence
Regardless of whether the case began with a criminal complaint or an indictment, it’s important to provide readers with some basic context. The most important thing to understand here is that criminal charges cannot be filed on the basis of a hunch or suspicion. There must be evidence. Specifically, enough evidence to provide “probable cause” to believe that a crime had occurred and that Eugene Yu was the one who did the crime. Bringing charges without evidence is itself a crime: malicious prosecution. It’s illegal. In fact, the LADA’s own guidelines require more than just probable cause to bring a case: they require that the case can be proved beyond a reasonable doubt: a higher standard. When a prosecutor, like Eric Neff, signs a complaint, they are certifying that evidence exists. High profile cases, like this one, are often reviewed by the filer’s entire chain of command. In other words, filing a criminal case is a more reliable indicator that a crime has been committed than just writing something online or posting on social media.
More context. A prosecutor cannot just “go rogue,” and file charges on whoever he likes for whatever reason he likes and have them arrested. A judge has to review the complaint to ensure that there is probable cause within 48 hours of arrest. This is a second pair of eyes on the complaint to ensure that it is based on evidence. The judge’s review provides an important safeguard for criminal defendants and it is another reason why readers can be sure that if there is a criminal case, there is evidence to support the defendant’s guilt.
The evidence is also given to a defense lawyer, who can also review it. If they believe there is not enough evidence, the defense has several mechanisms to challenge the complaint. The most significant is a preliminary hearing, which takes place within 10 court days of arraignment and during which the prosecution must show the judge the evidence in support of the complaint.
When a defendant is indicted, they have even more procedural safeguards. Indictments are issued not by prosecutors, but by grand juries, made up of random citizens. The grand jury, not the prosecutor, is the one who decides if there is enough evidence for charges.
All this is to say, Neff’s case is based on evidence. It’s more substantial than rumors on the internet.
Gascon Dismisses the Case
Neff was supervised by a more senior DDA during pretrial litigation, which included a demurrer. This DDA, by the way, also believed in the case and wanted to prosecute it. The demurrer was calendared for hearing on November 10, 2022. Prior to the hearing Neff was told by his supervisors that the DA’s office would dismiss the case. A manager, not Neff, made the actual motion for dismissal.
Tiffiny Blacknell, the notoriously political ex-public defender working as George Gascon’s advisor, said that LADA hasn’t ruled out refiling the charges after reviewing the evidence. She said LADA would “assemble a new team, with significant cyber security experience to determine whether any criminal activity occurred.”
On November 14, a few days after the dismissal, Neff made a written complaint alleging that the dismissal was politically motivated. He claimed that LADA George Gascon wanted to avoid the perception that he was supporting President Trump’s claims about the 2020 election. Two days later, Neff was placed on administrative leave. LADA conducted an internal investigation but found no evidence that Mr. Neff committed any misconduct. No disciplinary actions were taken and he was reinstated in April 2024, but moved by Gascon to a less prestigious unit. Going nowhere, Neff eventually left the office.
In September 2023, Yu sued LADA alleging civil rights violations and negligence. On January 27, 2024, Los Angeles County agreed to pay Yu and Konnech $5 million to settle a lawsuit arising out of the prosecution. Neff spoke during the Board of Supervisors meeting and questioned whether the timing of the settlement was intended to support Gascon’s re-election campaign, which ultimately failed. The Board approved the settlement without discussion.
On April 17, 2024, Neff began the process of suing the County of Los Angeles over the whole affair by filing a Governmental Tort Claim. The case is set for trial in early 2026.
Neff landed on his feet. In 2025 he was made acting head of the voting section of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division.
Local Coverage Has Been Misleading
The Los Angeles Times recently ran an article with the headline, “Trump’s DOJ hires voting rights lawyer behind L.A. case cited by conspiracy theorists.” The author of the article was reporter James Queally, who also publishes fiction about social justice activists fighting racist cops. Queally heavily implies that Neff brought false charges against Konnech and Yu. This conclusion seems to be based on the idea that the case would have proceeded if there had been reliable evidence. Queally does not consider what might seem obvious to a regular person: that the case was dismissed when the liberal DA realized he was helping the conservative president. Queally’s implication that the charges were false is also made without anyone having seen the evidence that the prosecution was based on. And it ignores the fact that the D.A.’s office paid for an outside law firm to investigate the matter. The outside firm cleared Neff.
Queally frames Neff’s new job in the federal Department of Justice as a reward for the prosecution against Konnech, and characterizes Neff as unqualified, despite over a decade of experience and time spent in LADA’s public integrity division, where he handled prosecutions related to elections.
Finally, Queally repeats allegations that Neff “withheld information about potential biases in the case from a grand jury, according to the two officials” that he does not name, and that many speculate to be Gascon loyalists who are out of power. According to the Ethics & Journalism Initiative, “journalists should use anonymous sources only when essential.” It’s hard to understand how repeating a smear against Neff is essential. It’s also hard to square this allegation with the undisputed fact that Neff was cleared of any wrongdoing by an outside firm. At minimum, this use of anonymous sources was not essential. Withholding the source names deprives the reader of the ability to consider the motives of, say, allies of George Gascon vs. allies of Donald Trump.
A better reporter might have written that Neff stepped into a politically charged case and paid for it with his job. We don’t know what evidence Neff had to support his prosecution, only that it was reviewed by his chain of command and several judges who all agreed there was probable cause to believe the charges were true. If you want your prosecutors to be fearless in their pursuit of the truth, wherever it might lead, Neff’s story suggests that this is a myth. Dragging Neff’s name through the ringer because he is working for a president who is unpopular in Los Angeles teaches us that the LA Times has also failed to fearlessly pursue the truth, wherever it might lead.
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