Konnech CEO, Eugene Yu, was arrested in October in Michigan in connection with “theft of personal data.” The alleged stolen data belonged to poll workers and was the subject of True The Vote’s The PIT in Arizona last August, where Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips singled out the company.
Konnech builds software to manage the poll workers, poll locations, campaigns, assets, and supplies necessary to run elections in the United States, Canada, and Australia.
Kanekoa The Great, a spectacular investigative journalist and blogger, reported about the findings of The Pit on September 8, 2022
During The PIT, Phillips and Engelbrecht had alleged they were cooperating with the FBI in Michigan about data being sent overseas by this company. The investigation quickly started to turn on them after the FBI started to distance itself from the investigation.
Here is the link to the arrest notice, from the L.A. County’s website.
Following Yu’s arrest, Fairfax County in Virginia announced they had stopped using Konnech’s PollChief election worker management software.
Detroit later terminated its contract with Konnech following Yu’s arrest.
According to Jennifer Van Laar at RedState, Chinese officials with ‘superadministration’ privileges were given access to the Konnech system here in the US.
Now this…On Wednesday, L.A. County dropped the charges against Eugene Yu… the day after the midterm elections and just days after Engelbrecht and Phillips were released from jail after refusing to release the name of a confidential informant to judges in the case.
The Post Millennial reported:
On Wednesday, Los Angeles County prosecutor George Gascon dropped criminal charges against Eugene Yu, CEO of the Michigan election software company Konnech.
Yu was arrested in October, and stands accused of storing data on poll workers in a China-based server, which was a breach of the company’s contract with LA County.
In a statement, the district attorney’s office said that it had dropped the case due to concerns regarding the “pace of the investigation” and the “potential bias in the presentation” of evidence in the case.
“Mr. Yu is an innocent man,” said Gary Lincenberg, Yu’s lawyer, adding that “conspiracy theorists” were using the arrest to “further their political agenda.”
According to the New York Times, the sudden dismissal of the case leaves questions unanswered about Yu’s activities.
“The district attorney’s office did not clarify whether the company had, in fact, stored data in China. It was also not clear whether additional criminal or civil charges could be filed against Mr. Yu or Konnech from Los Angeles County or dozens of other counties that use Konnech’s election management software,” the New York Times reported.
Yu and Konnech had been at the center of a lawsuit against True the Vote, alongside leaders Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips.
The organization said at a conference over the summer that its team had located and downloaded Konnech’s poll worker data from the Chinese servers, and said that it had delivered the data to the FBI.
Konnech accused True the Vote of hacking and defamation.
The dropping of charges comes just days after Engelbrecht and Phillips were released from jail after refusing to release the name of a confidential informant to judges in the case.
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Gascon has faced a recall effort since taking office, with those against Gascon accusing him of being soft on crime. In July, the recall effort had received enough votes to proceed, though in August, it was revealed that they did not in fact have enough signatures, with nearly 90,000 signatures of the 566,857 signatures being from not registered voters and roughly 45,000 were duplicates, according to Los Angeles Magazine.
A hearing has been moved up regarding the recall effort and their signatures to December 6, with the group being granted an expedited review of the signatures.
