DOJ’s New Voting Lawyer Has Web of Ties to Election-Conspiracy Theorists 

The Republican lawyer Eric Neff, who recently took on a leading role in the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) push to obtain state voter records, briefly represented Patrick Byrne, the prominent election-conspiracy theorist who aided President Donald Trump’s effort to steal the 2020 election.

On that case, in which Byrne was being sued for defamation by Hunter Biden, Neff briefly worked under Stefanie Lambert, another leading election denier who will soon face trial in connection with a scheme to access vote tabulators in Michigan. 

Neff has other troubling ties to election conspiracy theorists. Democracy Docket reported Friday that, as a local prosecutor, he brought charges against a software company exec based on a tip from the election denial group True the Vote. The charges were quickly dismissed and the county paid $5 million to settle a lawsuit over the flawed prosecution.

Neff’s myriad connections to the far-right fringe underscore how, under Trump, DOJ has shifted away from protecting voting rights to instead prioritize restricting access and stoking baseless fears about voting.

Byrne, the founder and former CEO of Overstock.com and a close ally of Mike Lindell, has been a leading voice pushing conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. In the election’s aftermath, he attended a notorious Oval Office meeting at which Trump and his allies, including Michael Flynn and Sidney Powell, schemed to overturn the results. Byrne later spoke at the Jan. 6, 2021 rally that preceded the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob. He later testified before the congressional committee that investigated the riot. 

Byrne also helped finance a notoriously botched audit of the 2020 election in Arizona, and continued pushing baseless claims on social media that foreign powers like China helped rig the election. 

Biden sued Byrne for defamation in California in November 2023 after Byrne gave an interview in which he accused Biden and his father, former President Joe Biden, of being involved in an Iranian bribery scheme. 

When the case went to trial in July, Neff appeared as part of Byrne’s legal team, according to court documents. The team was led by Lambert, a right-wing attorney, former Michigan county clerk, and prominent election denier who will soon face trial in the state for her alleged role in a scheme to access voting tabulators in the 2020 election. 

Notably absent from the court hearing was Byrne himself, who claimed he was in Dubai hiding out from assassins sent by the Venezuelan government. 

After Lambert was disqualified from the case because of the felony charges against her in Michigan, the judge named Neff and another lawyer on the team as Byrne’s lead counsel, by default. 

The judge also admonished Neff for failing to stand up when addressing the bench, and asked Neff whether he had ever tried a case in federal court, according to court transcripts obtained by Above the Law, a legal news site. 

“Never in federal court,” Neff responded.

A few days later, Neff was found never to have been admitted to the bar of the Central District of California, despite having signed a document stating that he was admitted to practice in the court. By that time, however, he had already been fired by Byrne, according to the court transcript. In October, a federal judge ordered Byrne in default at the request of Biden’s lawyers, after Byrne failed to have legal representation at a pre-trial hearing. Litigation is ongoing.

Last year, Neff wrote several articles for the conservative news site RedState raising questions about Dominion voting machines — another popular right-wing conspiracy theory.

In his new role at DOJ, Neff is part of the department’s sweeping effort to seize private voter data from every state. Neff’s name appears in recent DOJ lawsuits against Washington,  Delaware, New York, and Michigan to obtain those states’ voter roll data. And, in a recent email to Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold (D), Neff identified himself as “the new contact for the voting section for our request for Colorado’s voter registration list.”

A DOJ spokesperson declined to comment last week on Neff’s hiring, and Neff himself did not respond to Democracy Docket’s inquiry.

“This is where you see partisanship and loyalty being placed above qualifications and skills,” David Becker, a former DOJ voting section lawyer and now a prominent election administration expert, previously told Democracy Docket of Neff’s hiring. “This is DEI for loyalists.”