On Wednesday, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office quietly dropped charges against Eugene Yu, CEO of the election software firm Konnech, citing “potential bias.”

As we reported in October, Yu, a Chinese national, was accused of theft of personal identifying information. The criminal complaint alleged:

“…Konnech employees known and unknown sent personal identifying information of Los Angeles County election workers to third-party software developers [in China] who assisted with creating and fixing Konnech’s internal ‘PollChief’ software.”

The charges were dismissed without prejudice, allowing the DA’s office to refile charges after a team of cybersecurity experts assess the data contained on hard drives and servers seized from Konnech and Yu.

“We are concerned about both the pace of the investigation and the potential bias in the presentation and investigation of the evidence,” the office said in a statement. “As a result, we have decided to ask the court to dismiss the current case, and alert the public in order to ensure transparency.”

The Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office indicated it had not ruled out refiling criminal charges after a review of the evidence. It said it had assembled a new team of investigators with cyber security expertise and an independent expert to review the “immense volume of digital data” it has collected in the case.

It said it could take months to assess that evidence and determine whether criminal charges are warranted.

It seems likely that Yu’s defense attorney was pressuring the DA’s office to quickly go forward with the trial to protect Yu’s civil rights. It’d be nice if January 6 defendants were provided with the same standard. They sit in jail while Yu is out on bond with only an ankle monitor keeping him from heading back to China.

(NOTE: This piece was edited post-publication to add information about cyber security investigators that was inadvertently omitted.)