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 prosecution of the CEO of Konnech, a software company that election conspiracy theorists say was being held captive by the Chinese government.
Now, three years later, Neff is one of the Trump administration's top election monitors.
Late last year, he was named in lawsuits filed by the U.S. Justice Department's Civil Rights Division and was listed as the “acting director” of the voting section.
Neff's appointment Mother Jones first reported, prompted a renewed review of his work by the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office.
The Times interviewed several of Neff's former colleagues, who revealed new details about allegations of misconduct stemming from the Conneja case and said they were dismayed that a man with almost no experience in federal election law had been appointed to the top position.
Neff led the 2022 investigation into Konnech, a tiny Michigan company whose software is used by election officials in several major cities. IN application to initiate a criminal case, Neff accused the company's CEO, Eugene Yu, of fraud and embezzlement, alleging that the company stored poll worker information on a server in China, a violation of its contract with the Los Angeles County Recorder's Office.
Six weeks after the complaint was filed, prosecutors closed the case and began investigating “irregularities” and bias in the way evidence was presented against Konnech, prosecutors said in a 2022 filing.
The county paid Konneck $5 million and joined the motion to find Yoo factually innocent. as part of a legal settlement.
The internal investigation focused on allegations that Neff misled district attorney office leaders 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 it publicly.
Neff also allegedly withheld information from the grand jury about potential bias in the case, two officials said.
In a civil lawsuit filed last year, Neff said an internal review by prosecutors cleared him of wrongdoing. Two officials familiar with the investigation, who spoke on condition of anonymity, disputed Neff's assessment of the findings.
Representative Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman declined to comment or provide the results of the investigation into Neff, which officials said was conducted by an outside law firm that prepared a report on the case. Neff's lawyer also did not provide a copy of the report.
A Justice Ministry spokesman declined to comment.
Neff's attorney Tom Yu, who is not related to the Konnech CEO, said his client is not required to provide background information about the origins of the case to the grand jury.
Neff's appointment comes as President Trump continues to remake the Justice Department in his own image, appointing political loyalists with no criminal law experience as U.S. attorneys in New Jersey and Virginia and pursuing prosecutions of his political enemies such as former FBI Director James Comey.
Trump has never retracted his false claim that he won the 2020 election.
When then – Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón announced charges against Konneck 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 voter fraud.”
The Konnech case focused on contract fraud rather than voter fraud or voter fraud. Six weeks after the charges were filed, the case fell apart.
The DA's office cited Neff's overreliance on evidence provided by True the Vote, a group that promoted baseless Chinese government conspiracies about Konnech and also starred in a film that spread claims that the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent.
Gascón initially denied True the Vote's involvement in the case, but a district attorney's spokesman said weeks later that a message from group co-founder Gregg Phillips prompted the prosecution. Phillips testified in court in July 2022 that it was Neff who first contacted him about Konneck.
Two officials who spoke to The Times said Neff hid True the Vote's role from senior members of the DA's office, including Gascón, when presenting the case.
Gascón declined an interview request, noting that he is named in Neff's pending lawsuit, which is scheduled to go to trial in early 2026.
Neff's lawyer insisted the case against Konneck is strong.
“He was released because Trump tweeted the statement 'Go George, Go,'” the lawyer said. “That's why Eugene Yoo was released. Because Gascon was so scared that he lost his voice.”
Calls and emails to the lawyer who previously represented Evgeniy Yu’s interests were not answered.
In his lawsuit, Neff argued that he had evidence that “Conn. used third-party contractors based in China and did not follow security procedures” to protect the data of Los Angeles County poll workers. The evidence was not added to the claim as material evidence.
A Justice Department spokesman declined to describe Neff's job responsibilities. He is named in a number of lawsuits filed in recent months against states that have refused to turn over voter registration lists to the Trump administration.
Neff is also involved in a lawsuit filed against the Fulton County Clerk's Office in Georgia to obtain records related to the 2020 election, records show.
“We will not allow states to compromise the integrity and efficiency of elections by refusing to comply with our federal election laws,” the presidential aide said. Atty. Gen. Harmeet Dhillon, a California conservative who now heads the civil rights division, said in a recent statement. “If states fail in their duty to protect the integrity of the ballot, we will.”
Dillon declined to comment through a Justice Department spokesman.
The voting section “enforces the civil provisions of federal laws that protect the right to vote, including the Voting Rights Act,” according to the Justice Department's website.
Neff appears to have had no experience working on cases involving federal election law. He first became a Los Angeles County prosecutor in 2013 and spent years trying local crime cases from the comfort of a Pomona courthouse. He was promoted in 2020 and transferred to the public integrity unit, which investigates corruption, according to his lawsuit.
There he handled only two criminal cases related to elections. One of them was the Konnech case. Another involves allegations of election fraud against a Compton City Council member.
In August 2021, Isaac Galvan, a Democrat, was charged with conspiracy to commit election fraud after he allegedly tried to direct voters outside his municipal district to vote for him. Galvan won the race by just one vote, but was kicked out of the office when a judge determined that at least four incorrect ballots had been cast.
Galvan's criminal case is still pending; he recently pleaded guilty to charges in a separate corruption and bribery case in federal court. A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles said the district attorney's election fraud case and the bribery case against Galvan do not overlap. Federal prosecutors are not reviewing Konnech's case, the spokesman said.
Court documents show Neff was involved in the Galvan case in Los Angeles County, but a more senior attorney handled the prosecution.
Justin Levitt, a constitutional law professor at Loyola Law School who worked in the civil rights department during the Obama administration, said department heads typically have years of experience in the area of law they are supposed to oversee.
“The biggest problem with someone with Neff's history is the giant, flashy red flag that suggests a criminal case would be filed based on unreliable evidence,” Levitt said. “That's not what any prosecutor should do.”
Neff's lawyer, Yu, ridiculed the idea that his client was not experienced enough for his new role in the Trump administration or that he was chosen because of his involvement in the Konnech case.
“Eric got the job because he was qualified to get the job. He didn't get the job for any other reason. He got the job because he's a great lawyer,” Yu said. “I think the Department of Justice is very lucky to have Eric.”
Times writer Seema Mehta contributed to this report.
