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.
This story has been updated with comment from Sheriff Chad Bianco.
The California Supreme Court Wednesday said it would review Attorney General Rob Bonta’s petition and ordered Sheriff Chad Bianco to pause his department’s investigation into potential election fraud in last November’s special statewide election pending that review.
“Today’s decision by the California Supreme Court reins in the destabilizing actions of a rogue sheriff, prohibiting him from continuing this investigation while our litigation continues,” Bonta said in an emailed statement. “The Supreme Court has also agreed to review this case on the merits — a necessary and appropriate response to what is clearly an unprecedented situation. We look forward to briefing the court.”
Bianco, who is running for governor, previously said in court filings and an interview with The Riverside Record that the investigation had been paused pending the resolution of ongoing legal challenges.
“What the sheriff says and what he does are often two different things,” Bonta said. “The Riverside County Sheriff willfully defied my direct orders, seized 650,000 ballots, misused criminal investigatory tools, and created a constitutional emergency in the process.”
Bianco said the investigation, first reported by The Record, was basic and simple, but was being “prevented and convoluted using lawfare orchestrated by political activists.”
“The Riverside County Sheriff’s Office is confident this lawful investigation will proceed once this unprecedented attempt to cover it up by the attorney general has made its way through the courts,” he said. “Like all investigations, we abide by the rule of law and the direction and approval of our judicial system.”
In his petition, Bonta asked that the court determine whether Bianco was “violating the constitution and the government code by refusing to follow supervisory directives issued by the attorney general,” and whether action by the appellate court to order the sheriff to comply with Bonta’s orders was warranted to address Bianco’s “extraordinary and ongoing constitutional and statutory violation.”
The California Supreme Court’s order was filed just one day after Riverside County Superior Court Judge Gail O’Rane ordered the search warrants be unsealed in response to a motion filed by a coalition of media outlets including The Record.
The warrants were unsealed with the support of Bianco who wrote in a letter to the court that “sunlight is the best disinfectant.”
“Since the first warrant was issued, the sheriff’s office developed written procedures to guide the counting process in a careful and orderly manner, consistent with how ballot reconciliation is typically handled at the conclusion of an election,” he said. “Our plan has been to conduct the count transparently, including inviting appropriate stakeholders to observe, including the Registrar of Voters, the California Attorney General’s Office, election observers and making the process available for public.”
All three warrants — obtained February 9, February 23 and March 19 — cite information provided to the Riverside County Sheriff’s Office (RSO) by Greg Langworthy, who is part of a group of residents who call themselves the Riverside Election Integrity Team (REIT). That information was presented to the full Riverside County Board of Supervisors during a February 10 workshop.
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In all three warrants, RSO Investigator Robert Castellanos said seizing the ballots and conducting a review was being done in order to “prove or disprove any criminal conduct.”
The first warrant was specifically for the seizure of ballots from the November 2025 special statewide election. It initially also included a request for the voter registration roll along with any information used to identify voters. That request was scratched out prior to the approval of the warrant.
The second warrant expanded the scope to all material related to the election, stating that the material was “of extreme evidentiary importance to either prove or disprove fraudulent conduct.”
The third warrant requested that the court allow a special master to come in and oversee the recount in an effort to “avoid any potential appearance of impropriety” following directives by Bonta’s office to pause the investigation.
That warrant also disclosed that the department had started its recount of the ballots on March 5 and had made it through 22 boxes before the count ended for the day, a statement supported by the declaration of ROV Art Tinoco.
In that filing, Tinoco said an investigator from RSO came to his office with a laptop that showed a live video feed of the location where the ballots were being stored.
“My staff observed personnel from the Riverside County Sheriff’s Office unseal one pallet and begin counting ballots contained in those boxes,” he said in the filing. “At the end of the day the Riverside County Sheriff’s Office opened and counted 22 boxes from the pallet.”
When the counting for the day was completed, Tinoco said the investigator with the laptop containing access to the live feed left the office.
The search warrants also included information about two prior warrants related to alleged election fraud obtained by RSO in 2023 and 2024.
The first, obtained January 19, 2023, was a search warrant for “information regarding double voter information” from the Riverside County Registrar of Voters (ROV). The second, obtained March 6, 2024, was related to “possible mail-in ballot fraud” at the ROV.
The warrants include the probable cause statement for the second warrant, which included information previously inadvertently released by Bianco’s attorney Bob Tyler, as first reported by Inland Empire Law Weekly.
A hearing has been set for the Riverside County Superior Court case for 8:30 a.m. on April 13 in front of Judge O.G. Magno in Department 7 at the Riverside Historic Courthouse.
The case was originally set to be heard by Judge Dorothy McLaughlin in Department 10, but Bianco filed a peremptory challenge to disqualify her from the case on his belief that she was prejudiced against him.
Bianco has previously criticized McLaughlin’s decisions in this case, stating in an interview with The Record that she had a “documented history of political activism.”
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Honestly folks, ballots really only matter for state and local elections. There have been countless stories of ballots left behind at polling places for MONTHS after a presidential election. I have known people who worked at the polls and they too will acknowledge this. Have you never noticed how the news will call the results of an election HOURS before the polls here in California have closed? I have also received duplicate mail in ballots for some elections. Don’t worry . I didn’t vote multiple times.