The Riverside Record Joins Media Coalition In Effort To Unseal Warrants In Bianco Election Probe

Editor’s note: All legal documents pertaining to this case obtained by The Riverside Record can be accessed here. All of The Riverside Record’s reporting about Sheriff Chad Bianco’s election investigation can be found here.

The Riverside Record Wednesday joined a dozen news outlets in filing a motion to unseal three warrants obtained by the Riverside County Sheriff’s Office (RSO) in connection with Sheriff Chad Bianco’s investigation into alleged election fraud.

Earlier this week, Bianco said in a court filing that the investigation had been paused pending the resolution of three ongoing legal challenges, two with the California Supreme Court and one with the Riverside County Superior Court.

The Record was the first news outlet to report the department had initiated the investigation and, two weeks later, that the department had seized the ballots from last November’s special statewide election.

Lawyers representing The Record, along with The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, CalMatters and other newspapers and local television network affiliates filed the April 1 motion with the Riverside County Superior Court to unseal all of the documents and records related to the February 9, February 23 and March 19 search warrants, including the supporting probable cause statements or affidavits and inventory lists.

The coalition argued it was vitally important that the records be made public, since they’re central to the ongoing legal battle between Bianco, who is running for governor as a Republican, and Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat who is running for re-election. 

“The public should not be forced to navigate these competing allegations without the facts on which the investigation is based,” Jean-Paul Jassy, attorney for the news outlets, wrote in the motion. “Nor does the law require them to.”

Earlier this month, the sheriff’s office responded to a February 24 California Public Records Act Request by The Record seeking the warrants and supporting documents stating that the department was “not the holder of the records,” and to contact the court.

And just last week, Bianco denied CalMatters’ request for copies of the warrants, telling reporters, “When it’s unsealed, you’ll get to see it,” the outlet reported.

In the motion, attorneys for the media outlets argued that the information should be unsealed in accordance with state law which states that all search warrants “shall be open to the public as a judicial record” 10 days after issuance. State law also states that judicial records are “presumptively open,” and cannot be sealed without specific, on-the-record findings that there was an overriding interest greater than the right of public access to the records.

The attorneys further argued that Bianco himself publicized the investigation during a March 20 press conference, and said that even if the department had confidential information to protect, it did not justify the judge’s sealing of all records.

During that press conference, Bianco confirmed that the investigation was based on an alleged discrepancy of about 46,000 between the number of ballots cast and the number of ballots counted as first reported by a group of local residents calling themselves the Riverside Election Integrity Team (REIT). The ROV said the actual discrepancy was 103.

REIT presented its findings at a February 10 Riverside County Board of Supervisors workshop, first reported by The Record, where Registrar of Voters (ROV) Art Tinoco explained why the group’s methodology had produced an erroneous result.

Bianco has maintained that his goal has been to simply recount the ballots to see whether the information presented by REIT, which used handwritten election logs, or the ROV, which uses two separate state-approved systems to track ballots and votes, was correct.

“It is hard to imagine a stronger public interest: access to a proceeding purporting to resolve allegations relating to election integrity-allegations at the heart of our democracy,” Jassy wrote.

The coalition will also be filing a separate petition with the California Supreme Court that also seeks to have the records unsealed.