{"id":258181,"date":"2026-04-08T21:04:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T21:04:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/258181\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T21:04:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T21:04:10","slug":"california-supreme-court-halts-gop-sheriffs-ballot-investigation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/258181\/","title":{"rendered":"California Supreme Court halts GOP sheriff’s ballot investigation"},"content":{"rendered":"

The California Supreme Court ordered Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco on Wednesday to halt his investigation of hundreds of thousands of ballots he obtained from the county registrar to examine alleged voter fraud in last November\u2019s election.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The justices agreed unanimously to hear state Attorney General Rob Bonta\u2019s challenge to the actions by Bianco, a Republican candidate for governor, and decide whether the sheriff was acting illegally.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the court said, Bianco and his staff \u201care hereby ordered to pause the investigation into the November 2025 special election and preserve all seized items.\u201d The sheriff says he has voluntarily put his investigation on hold, but Bonta says Bianco has continued to examine the ballots and has seized more of them since acquiring 650,000 ballots after obtaining a search warrant from Superior Court Judge Jay Kiel, a political ally<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Washington Post reported Wednesday<\/a> that Bianco said he would consider seizing ballots after the June primary election for governor\u00a0\u2014 on which he will appear as a candidate\u00a0\u2014 and other state offices if questions are raised about their validity.<\/p>\n

The court\u2019s order, Bonta said in a statement, \u201creins in the destabilizing actions of a rogue Sheriff, prohibiting him from continuing this investigation while our litigation continues.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kiel\u2019s warrant has been sealed from public view, but on Wednesday another judge ordered it unsealed at the request of the Chronicle and other media organizations.<\/p>\n

\u201cCourt records are presumed to be open\u201d unless there is a law or a strong public benefit to keep them confidential, Superior Court Judge Gail O\u2019Rane wrote in her order. She said no one in the case has objected to unsealing the warrant, and she has not found any information in the documents \u201cfor which there is an overriding interest that overcomes the right of public access.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bianco said he sought the ballots after a conservative group claimed there had been an overcount of more than 45,000 Riverside County votes in the November election, when California voters overwhelmingly approved\u00a0\u2014 by more than 3 million votes\u00a0\u2014 Proposition 50, a measure backed by\u00a0Gov. Gavin Newsom to redraw congressional districts in order to make five seats more favorable for Democrats. It was in response to redistricting by Texas Republicans aimed at increasing their U.S. House majority by five seats.<\/p>\n

Bonta, a Democrat, said in court filings that Bianco had not provided any evidence of a crime\u00a0\u2014 a legal mandate for a seizure and\u00a0search\u00a0\u2014 and that the sheriff was required to follow his order, as California\u2019s chief law officer, to stop his investigation.\u00a0Bianco replied that he was conducting a legitimate criminal investigation,\u00a0and that Bonta had no authority to intervene.<\/p>\n

By granting Bonta\u2019s request to review the case, the state Supreme Court agreed to decide whether Bianco must obey the attorney general\u2019s order.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, the justices said, Bonta and Bianco should discuss \u201cadditional measures to protect the integrity of the seized items,\u201d such as the appointment of an independent manager, known as a \u201cspecial master,\u201d to \u201ctake temporary possession of them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The California Supreme Court ordered Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco on Wednesday to halt his investigation of hundreds…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":258182,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[7,204,13,101,103,102,104,106,105,2013],"class_list":{"0":"post-258181","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-election","10":"tag-politics","11":"tag-san-francisco","12":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","13":"tag-san-francisco-news","14":"tag-sf","15":"tag-sf-headlines","16":"tag-sf-news","17":"tag-us-and-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258181\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}