Court to release secret warrants that Riverside sheriff who's running for California governor used to seize over 650,000 ballots

Grace Toohey and Hailey Branson-Potts, Los Angeles Times on Apr 8, 2026

Published in News & Features

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LOS ANGELES — Secret warrants obtained by the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department to seize more than 650,000 ballots in a controversial investigation of election fraud allegations will soon be made public.

Riverside County Superior Court Judge Gail O’Rane on Tuesday ordered the warrants unsealed after several media organization, including the Los Angeles Times, sued to review the documents. The warrants have yet to be released, but they are expected to provide the first glimpse into the allegations of fraud — allegations that officials say are unfounded.

Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, who championed the probe, was in favor of the warrants becoming unsealed, according to the judge’s order. Riverside officials had sought to keep the documents secret, citing an active investigation.

The three search warrants, which were requested by the sheriff’s department and signed by a county judge, allowed deputies to seize some 1,400 boxes of ballots in February and March. There is no exact figure for the number of ballots seized, however 1,000 boxes are estimated to contain 650,000 ballots.

The investigvation and ballot seizure drew widespread criticism and several legal challenges, including one from California Attorney General Rob Bonta.

Bonta said his office reviewed the warrants after they were issued, and found “deficiencies” that justified a halt to the investigation and execution of the warrants, according to court filings. Bonta said “the affidavits did not identify any specific felony offense the sheriff had probable cause to believe had been committed or that a particular person had committed a felony.”

Bianco, however, did not adhere to the attorney general’s request and went ahead with the ballot seizures.

But as legal challenges mounted, Bianco announced recently that he had suspended the investigation pending legal reviews. Bianco, a fervent President Donald Trump supporter, is a Republican candidate for governor, though this week Trump endorsed the other GOP candidate, conservative commentator Steve Hilton.

Also on Wednesday, the California Supreme Court granted Bonta’s request for a stay in the investigation, ordering all parties in the case to “pause the investigation into the November 2025 special election and preserve all seized items.”

Bonta argued that the formal court order was necessary because “what the sheriff says and what he does are often two different things.”

“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 a prepared statement. He called the ruling a “necessary and appropriate response to what is clearly an unprecedented situation.”

Bonta’s office had filed for the Supreme Court review after its petition with California’s 4th District Court of Appeal was denied last month, prompting the attorney general to file new petitions in both Riverside County Superior Court and the state’s highest court. Both remain ongoing.

The UCLA Voting Rights Project has also filed a petition to the California Supreme Court arguing that all ballots must remain in the custody of the county registrar of voters under state law.

The ballots in question are from the November election for Proposition 50, which has temporarily redrawn the state’s congressional districts to favor Democrats in response to partisan redistricting in Republican states, including Texas. After doing its own audit from the election, a local citizens group has claimed the county’s tally was falsely inflated by more than 45,000 votes. Bianco has said he wants to “determine the validity” of that claim.

Bu voting fraud remains rare across the U.S., and the Riverside County Registrar of Voters officials have emphatically rejected any claims of voter fraud. In a lengthy, public presentation, Registrar of Voters Art Tinoco explained the group’s allegations were inaccurate, based on a misunderstanding of raw data that had not been fully processed.

The actual discrepancy, Tinoco said, was 103 votes — a variance of 0.016%.

California law requires county officials to keep election materials sealed for 22 months for elections involving a federal office and for six months for all other contests.

The Proposition 50 election took place on Nov. 4, so the ballots are scheduled to be destroyed in May.