Riverside Sheriff Chad Bianco seizes more ballots, defying California officials who ordered him to stop

The Riverside County sheriff, who is a leading Republican candidate for governor, this week seized even more ballots from last November’s election, part of an escalating crusade to look into unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud — much to the alarm of state law enforcement officials and election integrity watchdogs.

According to the new court filings, Sheriff Chad Bianco seized an additional 426 boxes of ballot materials from county elections officials on Tuesday, expanding the cache of election materials the sheriff plans to review in what he called a "fact-finding mission" to determine if votes were fraudulently counted. Last month, his department seized more than 650,000 ballots cast in Riverside County in the November election for Proposition 50, which temporarily redrew the state’s congressional districts to favor Democrats.

The move pits Bianco at further odds with Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, who has called on the sheriff to halt the investigation, citing legal and ethical concerns, including how the probe "sets a dangerous precedent and will only sow distrust in our elections.”

In a new lawsuit related to the case, Bonta said the situation "demands immediate judicial intervention" because Bianco has defied directives from his office — the state's top law enforcement agency — and proceeded with an investigation that hasn't properly identified "any particular crime that may have been committed."

Read more: What we know about the Republican sheriff who seized 650,000 ballots

Without a court order pausing the investigation, "the sheriff's misguided investigation threatens to sow distrust and jeopardize public confidence in the upcoming primary and general elections, not just in Riverside County but around the state," the lawsuit said.

Representatives for Bianco's campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Neither did the Riverside County Sheriff's Department.

Bianco has previously said that his department received warrants “approved and signed by a judge” to seize the elections materials. The warrants remain under seal. In an interview with The Times this week, he rejected criticism of his move.

“From the very, very beginning, Chad Bianco didn’t say this was political,” Bianco said, referring to himself in the third person. “Chad Bianco said we have an allegation of fraud with numbers that don’t add up, and no one has an exact reason why. So we have to find out the exact reason why. It’s plain and simple. Plain and simple.”

Critics have been alarmed at his actions, saying it's part of a larger campaign by some on the right to erode trust in the election process.

The attorney general's new filing requested expedited ruling from the Riverside County Superior Court in order to "halt the [sheriff's] brazen, ongoing violations of the Attorney General’s orders, and prevent [sheriff] from further tampering with elections materials."

On Thursday, the UCLA Voting Rights Project also filed a petition requesting that the California Supreme Court require Bianco to return all seized ballots to the county's voter registrar office. The petition, filed on behalf of Riverside County voters, argues that all ballots must remain in the custody of the county Registrar of Voters under state law.

“Our election laws are clear: voter ballots are sacred and must be protected from tampering. Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco is supposed to enforce the law, not break it," former California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra, who is also running for governor and is the senior voting rights advisor for UCLA's Voting Rights Project, said in a statement. "His reckless seizure... and his attempt to oversee a recount not only violate California election law but are based on no credible evidence whatsoever. Law enforcement officials are legally prohibited from interfering in counting ballots, in California and nationwide.”

Read more: He's telling Californians they can't trust elections — and it's catching on with the GOP

Bonta's office echoed those concerns earlier this week in a letter to a state appeals court, bringing up concerns that the vote-by-mail ballots seized by Bianco "contain confidential information, particularly voter signatures, and are strictly protected from disclosure by California law."

The ballots in question are from the November election for Proposition 50, which temporarily redrew the state’s congressional districts to favor Democrats in response to partisan redistricting in Republican states, including Texas.

Bianco, an outspoken Trump supporter, said his investigators are looking into allegations by a local citizens group that “did their own audit” and found that the county’s tally was falsely inflated by more than 45,000 votes — a claim that local election officials have rejected. He said that it’s his constitutional duty to investigate a potential crime and that he is not trying to change the election results.

Staff writer Hailey Branson-Potts contributed to this story.

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.