WASHINGTON — Before he became a high-ranking political appointee at the Department of Justice, Eric Neff represented the former chief executive of Overstock.com, the online retailer, who pushed President Trump to steal the 2020 presidential election.
As a Los Angeles County prosecutor, Neff led an investigation of Konnech, a Michigan election software company, built on tips from True the Vote, a political right-of-center group.
And in December, Neff signed on as U.S. government attorney in a case the Trump administration filed against Fulton County, Ga., over records about the 2020 election, a campaign Trump lost.
Now as acting chief of DOJ’s voting rights unit, Neff is leading the Trump administration probe of New Jersey’s voter registration system, one of dozens of cases that the federal government has filed against states, demanding they turn over their voter rolls.
In the state Legislature and on Capitol Hill, Republican politicians have seized upon disclosure of a yearlong voter registration error in New Jersey’s election network during the Phil Murphy administration. Republicans in Washington are using the errors to bolster their case to pass federal legislation that would make it more difficult to register to vote.
In a July 21 letter sent to Democratic Gov. Mikie Sherrill, Harmeet Dhillon, the chief of the department’s civil rights division, demanded that New Jersey officials supply federal authorities with the list “within five business days” of the roughly 6,600 noncitizens registered to vote and the approximately 400 who cast ballots.
“Ensuring that U.S. citizens’ votes are not illegally diluted by noncitizens’ votes is of paramount importance,” Dhillon wrote in her letter, which NJ Spotlight News obtained.
Dhillon requested the names, dates of birth, nationalities, addresses, as well as voter registration dates and locations for the group of 6,600, plus the dates, locations and methods of voting for the approximate 400 of noncitizens who voted. In the letter, Dhillon, herself an election denier, instructed New Jersey officials to direct any questions to Neff.
Withholding records
New Jersey allows people who apply for driver’s licenses or state IDs to join voter rolls. Sherrill last week disclosed that for 12 months starting in June 2023, Motor Vehicle Commission software wrongly registered people to vote, even if they said they were not U.S. citizens. The governor said her administration will not turn over records to the Trump administration.
The Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comment from NJ Spotlight News seeking information about when Neff was hired.
Under Trump, the department has filed lawsuits against 30 states plus Washington, D.C., to obtain unredacted voter rolls.
The Senate confirmed Dhillon, a former Republican Party official in California, on April 3, 2025, by a 52-45 vote to be an assistant attorney general. Sens. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Andy Kim (D-NJ) both voted against her.
In 2024, Dhillon represented Kari Lake, an election denier who ran that year in Arizona for a U.S. Senate seat. Her law firm also defended Trump and staffers to the president in cases about the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Weeks before domestic terrorists sacked the Capitol, Dhillon urged the nation’s highest court to intervene. “We’re waiting for the United States Supreme Court which the president has nominated three justices to step in and do something and, hopefully, Amy Coney Barrett will come through and pick it up,” she said on “Lou Dobbs Tonight” on FOX Business in November 2020.
Neff, too, has links to people who assert that Trump won re-election. He briefly represented Patrick Byrne, an election denier and former CEO of Overstock.com who spoke at a pro-Trump rally on Jan. 6, 2021.
The Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol interviewed Byrne during its investigation. He was present at a Dec. 18, 2020, meeting at the White House of election conspiracists including lawyer Sidney Powell and former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn.
Neff last year briefly represented Byrne in a federal defamation case in California brought by Hunter Biden. In a lawsuit, it was alleged that Byrne had spread a false claim that Biden had sought an $800 million bribe from Iran in 2021 in exchange for having his father, President Joe Biden, unfreeze billions of dollars in assets.
Stephen Wilson, a federal judge in California and appointee of President Ronald Reagan, found for Biden in a ruling this month, awarding him $1.7 million.
“Overall, in the totality of circumstances, by far the most plausible explanation is that Defendant is not credible, fabricates awesome and farfetched narratives to garner attention in the media, and fabricated the defamatory story at issue in this case to damage Plaintiff’s reputation,” Wilson said in his ruling.
