Whistleblower: Yes, Election Data Company Gave U.S. Poll Workers’ Personal Info To China
A recently filed whistleblower lawsuit against the election data firm Konnech Inc. and its founder Eugene Yu includes detailed allegations from a former employee that corroborate True the Vote’s claim that Konnech transferred American poll workers’ data to China. The whistleblower’s allegations raise more questions about the FBI’s involvement in the investigation of Konnech and the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office’s decision to drop its criminal case against Yu.
In a sworn civil complaint filed late last month in a Michigan state court, a former employee of Konnech, Grant Bradley, provided an insider’s tale of the operations of the election data firm. According to the verified complaint, Konnech provides “election logistic software” to 32 clients in North America, using “developers, designers and coders” who “are all Chinese nationals based out of Wuhan, China.”
Bradley claims he “worked with the Chinese programmers on a daily basis,” and that he “witnessed customer’s data (specifically poll watcher information) being made accessible to foreign nationals from China.” When he raised concerns about foreign nationals having access to the data, Bradley alleges his supervisors said that “everyone [other software companies like Microsoft and Apple] was doing it.”
Until September 2022, however, Bradley claims he “did not know the full extent of the information provided to the Chinese nationals.” In September of 2022, however, Konnech sued True the Vote for publicly accusing the Michigan-based company of storing poll workers’ data on servers in China.
22-12-22 Verified Complaint (1) by The Federalist on Scribd
Konnech’s lawsuit against True the Vote followed a series of podcasts the organization’s founder, Catherine Engelbrecht, and a former board member who works closely with her, Gregg Phillips, participated in starting in August of 2022. During those podcasts, the duo claimed they had been assisting the FBI to expose Konnech’s purported use of a server in China to store election workers’ personal identifying information. In one podcast, they announced they were working with people “to bring this work to, to a grand jury for the first time,” and that they have the “support of, of a major prosecutorial office in the United States … and [that] they are moving this along.”
After True the Vote began making allegations against Konnech, Bradley alleged in his complaint that he “began to investigate the extent of the information provided to the Chinese programmers by Defendants Yu and Konnech.” Bradley claimed he then “immediately set out to find alternative work,” but had been unable to find a new job before police raided Konnech on Oct. 4, 2022.
Following Yu’s arrest, Bradley alleged that he “was told by his supervisors not to speak with the police or cooperate in their investigation of Defendants Yu and Konnech’s activities,” but Bradley said he “ignored the directive of his supervisors.” Instead, Bradley claims, he “asked to meet with the police on the day of the raid so that he could provide them with handwritten notes and other electronic evidence he believes further substantiates Defendants’ illegal activities.”
Within days of Bradley’s decision to cooperate with police, Yu and Konnech fired him, according to the complaint, which then alleged a claim under the Michigan Whistleblowers’ Protection Act and a claim for wrongful termination under state law.
More Allegations
Bradley’s lawsuit included two other allegations of note.
First, Bradley alleged that “the decision of Defendants to illegally store information on servers housed in China” had ruined his reputation. That allegation suggests that Konnech had, in fact, stored data on “servers housed in China,” and that possibility resurrects concerns over the FBI’s involvement in the investigation of Konnech, as well as the L.A. district attorney’s decision to drop the criminal charges it had brought against Yu.
As I detailed previously, True the Vote’s Engelbrecht and Phillips claimed the FBI had undertaken an 18-month investigation into the evidence provided by a confidential human source that Yu maintained the personal information of tens of thousands of American election workers on a server in China. But then, after Konnech sued True the Vote, Engelbrecht, and Phillips, the FBI allowed its CHS to be outed and apparently dropped the investigation.
The L.A. County D.A.’s office was also working with True the Vote and had indicted Yu following an independent investigation launched based on evidence that Phillips had shared with county officials. And that indictment led to Yu’s arrest in Michigan and Bradley’s cooperation with investigating officers.
Following Yu’s arrest, the L.A. County D.A.’s office issued a press release stating that Konnech had “stored on servers in the People’s Republic of China” the personal information of election workers, in violation of the county’s $2.9 million, five-year contract that required Konnech to securely maintain the data and only allow United States citizens and permanent residents to have access to it.
Soon after news of Yu’s arrest broke, True the Vote publicly revealed it had assisted with the investigation, and that apparently prompted the L.A. County D.A. to backpedal on the case against Yu. Rather than unseal the indictment it had reportedly obtained against Yu, the L.A. County prosecutor charged Yu with two crimes in a criminal complaint, namely conspiring to commit a felony and the fraudulent appropriation of public funds.
Unlike the press release, in which the L.A. County D.A. had accused Yu of storing poll workers’ data on a Chinese server, the criminal complaint alleged only that Yu, on behalf of Konnech, had allowed third-party contractors based in China to access American election workers’ personal data. Then, less than a month later, the L.A. County D.A. dropped the charges against Yu, explaining its decision flowed from a “concern[ed] about both the pace of the investigation and the potential bias in the presentation and investigation of the evidence.”
Implications
While Bradley’s lawsuit against Yu and Konnech concerns solely his claim for damages for wrongful termination, the facts he alleged — and which he swore to in signing the verified complaint — support the factual basis alleged in the L.A. County’s criminal complaint against Yu, raising the question of why the prosecutor dismissed the case.
Bradley’s verified complaint likewise suggests that Konnech stored the election workers’ data on a Chinese server, just as a CHS had told the FBI. Significantly, though, Bradley never alleged he saw the data stored on a Chinese server. And according to Yu’s attorney, Konnech’s IT director confirmed to the FBI that “no data was stored on a Chinese server,” and it would be a federal crime to lie to the FBI.
Yet the FBI spent 18 months investigating Konnech based on evidence provided by a CHS that purportedly showed Konnech stored personal election workers’ data on a Chinese server. But if the CHS’s data was not accurate, why did the FBI continue the investigation for nearly a year and a half? And why would the FBI allow the L.A. County D.A.’s office to publicly accuse Konnech in a press release of storing the data on a Chinese server if the FBI knew True the Vote’s claims were false?
The FBI has remained mum about the entire situation, and the corrupt media seem not to care. Bradley’s lawsuit, however, provides an opportunity for the facts to be cleared up.
Bradley’s verified complaint also raises a new issue, meriting investigation, with the former Konnech employee alleging — again, under oath — that soon after he began working at Konnech, Yu approached him “about making a campaign contribution to Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s campaign in his name,” and that Konnech offered to then “reimburse him” for the donation. Bradley states he “immediately recognized Defendant Yu’s request to be a violation of Michigan Campaign Finance Law and rejected the overture from Defendant Yu.”
While this allegation has nothing to do with Bradley’s underlying wrongful termination claims, Bradley claims he included the information in his complaint “as further evidence of Defendant Yu’s disregard for the laws of this State.”
The Federalist reached out to two attorneys representing Yu in his defamation case against True the Vote for comment, but they did not respond to the inquiry. So, for now, the public must await further developments in Yu’s lawsuit against True the Vote and Bradley’s lawsuit against Yu and Konnech, as the only agency that seems to know the truth is the FBI — and they refuse to either clear Yu’s name or provide the L.A. County D.A.’s office confirmation on the validity of the CHS’s evidence. Either scenario would represent another crack in the FBI’s crumbling reputation.
Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.
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