State AG takes Riverside County sheriff to court over seized ballots

The feud between California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco has escalated after Bonta asked a court to stop Bianco's investigation into alleged election fraud.

In a 70-page petition filed with the Fourth Appellate District Monday, Bonta wrote that "the Sheriff's misguided investigation threatens to sow distrust and jeopardize public confidence" in upcoming elections. The investigation, which he also called "sweeping and unprecedented," is an abuse of the criminal process, he wrote.

Bianco, who is a leading Republican candidate for governor, last month seized more than 650,000 ballots cast in Riverside County in the November election for Proposition 50, which temporarily redrew the state's congressional districts to favor Democrats.

The sheriff has said that his investigators are looking into allegations by a local citizens group that “did their own audit” and found that the county’s tally was falsely inflated by more than 45,000 votes — a claim that local election officials have emphatically rejected.

Bianco has described his probe as a "fact-finding mission" to determine if votes were fraudulently counted. He has accused the attorney general, a Democrat, of improperly interfering with what he says is a lawful criminal investigation.

In Riverside County, the proposition passed by more than 82,000 votes. Statewide, it passed with about 64% of the vote and a margin of more than 3.3 million ballots.

"Well, well, well, the political corruption in California just gets bigger and bigger," Bianco said in a social media video Monday night in response to Bonta's petition.

"Why in the world would Rob Bonta want that count stopped unless he was afraid of what that count would uncover?" he added. "We have an extremely politically biased appeals court, so this is going to be interesting."

Read more: More than half a million ballots seized by top GOP candidate in California governor’s race

Political observers have said that Bianco, an outspoken supporter of President Trump, appears to be vying for attention from Trump, who has called on the federal government to "nationalize" state-run elections, remains fixated on his 2020 election loss and has falsely claimed widespread fraud.

Kim Nalder, a political science professor and director of the Project for an Informed Electorate at Sacramento State, said that Bianco's investigation appears to be “an electoral ploy.”

“At this stage in the election, most voters haven’t really tuned into the gubernatorial race, and there are a ton of candidates,” she said. “People who don’t know his background will know now. This is clear signaling.”

The sheriff has denied the probe has anything to do with his campaign.

A poll released last week by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies and co-sponsored by The Times showed Bianco and conservative commentator Steve Hilton leading the crowded field of gubernatorial candidates by slim margins, with the Democratic vote split among multiple candidates in a left-leaning state.

Bonta's office said in a statement Monday evening that it was asking the court to pause the investigation "while we work to understand its basis."

Bonta's petition revealed that — in addition to warrants issued on Feb. 9 and 23 — the sheriff obtained a third warrant from the Riverside County Superior Court on March 19 to restart a paused recount of the ballots. The warrants now are under seal.

Bonta's office called the warrants and the affidavits supporting them legally deficient because "the Sheriff has not identified any particular crime that may have been committed by anyone — a necessary predicate to obtain a criminal search warrant."
Bonta had earlier questioned whether Bianco had concealed important information from the magistrate judge who approved the warrants.

In his petition, Bonta wrote that the sheriff's department had planned to assign "12 employees working four days a week, five to seven hours each day" to count the votes.

David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research and a former senior trial attorney overseeing voting enforcement for the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, agreed with Bonta's assessment that the sheriff's probe is a legally deficient "fishing expedition." He questioned how Bianco got a judge to sign off on three warrants.

“You can't use a warrant as a PR tool, as something to help your political campaign," Becker said. "You have to meet certain standards in order to obtain a warrant, because a warrant is extraordinary. A warrant is saying we believe there is probable cause to seize evidence, and we need it now."

Bianco said in a news conference Friday that a Riverside County Superior Court judge had ordered the appointment of a special master to oversee the count. His investigators had already begun counting, but the tally would start over under the court’s guidance, Bianco said.

"This isn't about counting yes and no votes," Bianco said in his social media video Monday. "This is simply counting the total ballots and comparing that total with the number of votes. ... Plain and simple. Common sense."

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.