‘Serious consequences’: Company warns Johnson County sheriff over election investigation
The election software company at the center of Johnson County Sheriff Calvin Hayden’s long-running elections investigation hit back on Monday, warning the sheriff that a baseless investigation results in “serious consequences.”
“I fully recognize that Sheriff Hayden has placed himself and his department in the awkward position of conducting a baseless investigation for the past several years into nonexistent election fraud in Johnson County,” attorney Rick Guinn, representing the company Konnech Inc. and its CEO Eugene Yu, wrote in a Jan. 29 letter to Hayden obtained by The Star.
“Sheriff Hayden should be very careful about making public statements concerning Konnech and Mr. Yu to somehow justify his obvious waste of taxpayer dollars.”
Guinn sent the letter to Hayden less than a week after Los Angeles County agreed to pay $5 million to Yu, who sued over civil rights violations after he was arrested there in 2022 on accusations that he illegally stored poll worker data in China. The case was dropped a few weeks later, with the district attorney citing “potential bias” in the investigation.
The attorney wrote in Monday’s letter that the multi-million settlement “should send a strong message to Sheriff Hayden of the serious consequences that result from a baseless investigation into nonexistent election fraud.”
Through his office’s spokesperson, Hayden declined to comment on Monday.
Hayden, a Republican, faces re-election this year if he chooses to run. He has so far not filed for reelection but his office has indicated he plans to do so. He would face a primary challenge from Doug Bedford, a former undersheriff, in the race that so far has drawn one Democratic candidate, Prairie Village Police Chief Byron Roberson.
Yu, the Chinese-American founder of the Michigan-based company, sued L.A. County and its district attorney’s office in September. His lawyers said in a news release that Yu was subjected to a wrongful, “politically motivated arrest” that was “based solely on utterly false conspiracy theories about Chinese election interference espoused by discredited, far-right extremists.”
Yu’s arrest in Los Angeles fueled right-wing conspiracies of election fraud across the country. And it propelled Hayden’s ongoing elections investigation in Johnson County, which afterward stopped using Konnech in 2022. Johnson County had used the software only to help manage election workers; the program had nothing to do with voting or voting information.
Despite the failed prosecution in California, the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office as recently as last month made it clear that Hayden continues to probe Konnech and accused the company of storing local election information in China.
Guinn wrote in Monday’s letter that the “actions of Sheriff Hayden with other election deniers have effectively destroyed Konnech and its founder, Eugene Yu. Mr. Yu is a first-generation migrant who had an American dream to create better management tools for the world. His dream has been shattered.”
In a letter on Dec. 5, Johnson County Sheriff’s Det. Kevin Cronister requested that the county continue to store ballots, dating back to the 2019 election onward, calling them evidence in the ongoing criminal investigation. He provided new details of the investigation, which appears to focus on whether the use of Konnech software led to a data breach.
Cronister wrote that the sheriff’s office is working with Los Angeles County to “obtain data specific to Johnson County,” saying the California county possesses “servers, computers, and other electronic equipment seized from Konnech Inc.’s headquarters several months ago.”
“As you may recall from previous discussion, we were advised there is evidence on these servers showing Johnson County, KS election information was sent to China through the Konnech, Inc., software leading to a potential compromise of our election management systems,” Cronister wrote last month.
Since its inception following the 2020 election, Hayden’s investigation into Johnson County’s elections has resulted in no criminal charges. But it has energized conspiracy theorists and election deniers as the sheriff touts his work at hard-right political events — including at a conference in November, where he talked about Konnech and said his investigation won’t end “until I know our elections are safe.”
Johnson County Commission Chairman Mike Kelly previously said Johnson County’s elections are “fair, safe and accurate” and that he “like others across the county are disappointed that there continues to be a theme without evidence of a lack of election integrity, which jeopardizes faith in the entire government process.”
The ongoing investigation has created a tense relationship between the sheriff and county, which has recently taken steps toward destroying the ballots as required by Kansas law, despite Hayden’s plea not to.
Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, a Republican, joined the debate last month, asking the Johnson County election commissioner to preserve the election records, citing their importance to Hayden’s investigation.
This story was originally published January 29, 2024 at 3:19 PM.
