The feud between California Atty. The dispute between Gen. Rob Bonta and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco escalated when Bonta asked a court to stop Bianco’s investigation into alleged election fraud.
In a 70-page petition filed Monday in the Fourth Appellate District, Bonta wrote that “the sheriff’s misguided investigation threatens to create distrust and jeopardize public trust” in the upcoming elections. The investigation, he wrote, which he also called “sweeping and unprecedented” is an abuse of the criminal process.
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 over Proposition 50, which temporarily redrawn the state’s congressional districts in favor of Democrats.
The sheriff has said his investigators are looking into allegations from a local citizens’ group that “conducted their own audit” and found that the county’s tally was erroneously inflated by more than 45,000 votes – a claim that has been vehemently denied by local elections officials.
Bianco described his investigation as a “fact-finding mission” to determine whether the votes were fraudulently counted. He has accused the attorney general, a Democrat, of improperly interfering in legal criminal investigations.
In Riverside County, the proposal passed by more than 82,000 votes. Statewide, it passed by a margin of about 64% of the vote and even more 3.3 million ballots.
“Okay, okay, political corruption is getting bigger and bigger in California,” Bianco said in a social media video Monday night in response to Bonta’s petition.
“After all, why would Rob Bonta want to stop that count unless he was afraid of what that count would reveal?” He added. “We have an extremely politically biased appeals court, so it’s going to be interesting.”
Political observers have said Bianco, a vocal supporter of President Trump, is trying to draw attention away from Trump, who has called on the federal government to “nationalize” state-run elections, by focusing on his 2020 election loss and falsely claiming widespread fraud.
Kim Nalder, a political science professor and director of the Project for Informed Voters at Sacramento State, said the investigation of Bianco appears to be “an election ploy.”
“At this stage of the election, most voters haven’t really tuned into the governor’s race, and there are a lot of candidates,” he said. “People who don’t know his background will know now. This is a clear indication.”
The sheriff has denied that the investigation has anything to do with his campaign.
A poll released last week by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Government Studies and co-sponsored by The Times showed Bianco and conservative commentator Steve Hilton leading by a slim margin in a crowded field of gubernatorial candidates, with the Democratic vote in the left-leaning state split among multiple candidates.
Bonta’s office said in a statement Monday evening that it was asking the court to halt the investigation “while we work to understand its basis.”
Bonta’s petition revealed that – in addition to the warrants issued on February 9 and 23 – the sheriff obtained a third warrant from Riverside County Superior Court on March 19 to resume the stalled recount of ballots. The warrants are now sealed.
Bonta’s office ruled the warrants and the affidavits supporting them were legally insufficient because “the sheriff has not identified any specific crimes that may have been committed by anyone – a necessary predicate for obtaining a criminal search warrant.”
Bonta had previously questioned whether Bianco had withheld critical information from the magistrate judge who approved the warrant.
In his petition, Bonta wrote that the Sheriff’s Department planned to hire “12 employees working five to seven hours a day, four days a week” to count the votes.
David Baker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research and a former senior trial attorney who oversaw voting enforcement for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, agreed with Bonta’s assessment that the sheriff’s investigation is a legally flawed “fishing expedition.” He questioned how Bianco got a judge to sign off on three warrants.
“You can’t use warrants as a PR tool, to help your political campaign,” Baker said. “You have to meet certain standards to get a warrant, because the warrant is extraordinary. The warrant is saying we believe there is probable cause to seize evidence, and we need it now.”
Bianco said at a news conference Friday that a Riverside County Superior Court judge had ordered the appointment of a special master to oversee the count. Bianco said his investigators had already begun counting, but would resume under the court’s guidance.
“This is not about counting the yes and no votes,” Bianco said in a social media video Monday. “It’s simply counting the total of ballots cast and comparing that total to the number of votes cast. …Plain and simple. Common sense.”
