Based on an initial review of the warrants and affidavits in the case, Bonta wrote that his \u201coffice has serious concerns as to whether probable cause existed to support the issuance of the warrants, and whether your office presented the magistrate with all available evidence as required by law.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
While Bonta\u2019s letter does not describe the underlying content of the search warrants, it points to a public presentation made by a resident at a Feb. 10 Riverside County Registrar of Voters meeting that \u201caddresses the alleged vote discrepancy that appears to be the basis of your investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n
In that meeting<\/a>, an individual identifying himself as \u201cErrol\u201d \u2014 wearing a \u201cTrump 2028\u201d hat \u2014 alleged the council had participated in local, state and federal election fraud.<\/p>\n At several points, the individual said he relied on Google for information on individuals and companies he was accusing of receiving improper payments. At another point, he claimed the Riverside County auditor would not disclose the purpose behind thousands of pages of county payments, before saying \u201cyou\u2019re not getting the files, I got them put away.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe have a lot of problems, you guys. You\u2019ve committed serious fraud here, forever,\u201d the individual alleged, adding that he hoped the members of the council were imprisoned.<\/p>\n Bonta accused Bianco of \u201cflagrantly violating my directives\u201d under the California State Constitution, and threatened court action should he proceed with the investigation and hand recount.<\/p>\n The act by Bianco \u2014 who is running third in the state\u2019s open primary for governor this month, per an Emerson College poll<\/a> \u2014 is the second such seizure of ballots to take place this election cycle, following the FBI\u2019s raid of Fulton County, Georgia\u2019s election office.<\/p>\n Gowri Ramachandran, director of elections and security at the Brennan Center for Justice, told CyberScoop that the election allegedly being investigated wasn\u2019t a close race<\/a>. Further, like virtually every other election, candidates or parties have opportunities to contest irregularities or results, including automatic recounts or recounts paid by candidates or campaigns \u2014 along with state courts that regularly adjudicate questions of election outcomes.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s important for people to know none of those processes involve someone coming in and haphazardly coming in and grabbing the ballots,\u201d she said, adding: \u201cI worry if it happens closer to an actual election what it could do to interfere with it.\u201d<\/p>\n Ramachandran said that by seizing physical ballots, which she called \u201cthe gold standard\u201d we use for determining ground-level truth about voter intent, Bianco was disrupting the chain of custody that is one of the key processes designed to give voters trust in their elections.<\/p>\n \u201cIt should just be a really high bar, not just, \u2018I\u2019m suspicious, I want to do a fishing expedition,\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s not enough to have someone who doesn\u2019t have any experience in counting ballots or keeping them safe [to] just come in and grab all that stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n
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