Secret warrants obtained by the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department to seize more than 650,000 ballots in a controversial investigation into alleged election fraud were made public Wednesday, raising new questions about whether the investigation was based on strong criminal evidence.
Riverside County Superior Court Judge Gail O’Rane on Tuesday ordered the warrants unsealed after several media organizations, including The Times, sued to review the documents. The release of the documents came shortly after the California Supreme Court halted the investigation pending a review of the case.
Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, who is also a Republican congressman, has resisted the investigation into election fraud and vote counting, which has drawn widespread criticism and legal challenges, including from California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta. Bonta had requested the intervention of the High Court of the country.
The warrants provide the first glimpse of disputed court documents related to alleged fraud — claims that election officials say are unfounded. However, they do not identify a specific situation or person who committed a specific incident of voter fraud. Riverside officials previously wanted to keep the documents private, citing an active investigation in response to records requests.
Three search warrants, signed by a district judge, were requested by Riverside County Sheriff’s Investigator Robert Castellanos. He said the election materials are needed to “prove or disprove any criminal conduct” in the 2025 election, citing an investigation by the Riverside County Election Integrity Team that revealed significant voter fraud.
Castellanos described himself as a 21-year veteran of the department with previous experience investigating allegations of voter fraud in the department. The warrants detail the seizure of more than 1,000 ballot boxes in February and March. They still haven’t released the exact number of votes cast, but the March warrant says deputies went through 22 ballot boxes with 12,561 votes.
Previously, Bonta said his office found “deficiencies” in the warrants that allowed the investigation and implementation of these warrants, according to court filings. Bonta said “the affidavits did not reveal any crime that the sheriff had reason to believe had been committed or that someone had committed a crime.”
David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research and a former senior attorney overseeing voter preservation for the United States Department of Justice, US Civil Rights Division, echoed some of Bonta’s concerns, calling the probable cause for these warrants “incredibly small.”
“In order to get a felony warrant, you must find the cause of the crime and there is evidence you must collect related to that crime,” said Becker after reviewing the newly released documents.
“These are the same conspiracies that we’ve seen elsewhere,” Becker said. “It is truly unfortunate to see law enforcement falling prey to these easily debunked conspiracy theories and abusing the approval process with frivolous claims in front of a friendly judge in order to seize what was already obvious and reviewed time and time again.”
While Bianco began an investigation into Bonta’s request to resign, he recently suspended the investigation pending a legal review. Bianco is an outspoken supporter of President Trump, who for years has promoted conspiracy theories that cast doubt on the nation’s electoral process, particularly early voting and mail-in. Trump this week endorsed another GOP candidate for governor of California, conservative commentator Steve Hilton.
On Wednesday, the California Supreme Court granted Bonta’s request to stop the investigation and ordered all parties to “stop the investigation for the November 2025 special election and retain all seized materials.” The court also agreed to hear a review of the case in the coming weeks.
Bonta asserted that the court order was important because “what the sheriff says and what he does are usually two different things.”
“Today’s decision by the California Supreme Court has taken an action that undermines the corrupt official, preventing him from continuing this investigation while our case is pending,” Bonta said in a prepared statement. He called the decision “a necessary and appropriate response to what is clearly an unprecedented situation.”
The attorney general argued that the judge illegally rejected his office’s instructions and proceeded with a case that “will only sow distrust in our elections.”
Bianco, in a video posted on social media on Wednesday, said he was “very happy” with the Supreme Court’s decision, although he acknowledged that it meant the investigation was still in its current state…
The head of the court said “he is very sure that they will allow us to continue this investigation even though the attorney general tried to hide it. … We will make sure that this investigation, like any investigation, is completed, and not swept under the rug.”
Bonta’s office had filed for Supreme Court review after its appeal to the California 4th Circuit Court of Appeals was denied last month, prompting the attorney general to file new motions in Riverside County Superior Court and the state supreme court. Both are ongoing.
The UCLA Voting Rights Project also filed a complaint with the California Supreme Court arguing that all ballots must remain in the custody of the county registrar of voters under state law.
The votes in question are from the November election on Proposition 50, which has redrawn state districts in favor of Democrats in response to redistricting by Republican states, including Texas. After conducting its own research into the election, a group of local residents said the district’s tally was inflated by more than 45,000 votes. Bianco said he wanted to “determine the merits” of that claim.
But voter fraud remains rare across the US, and officials with Riverside County’s registrar of voters have strongly denied any claims of voter fraud. In a long, public speech, Registrar of Voters Art Tinoco explained that the party’s allegations are not true, due to a misunderstanding of the raw data that has not been fully analyzed.
The real difference, Tinoco said, was 103 votes – a difference of 0.016%.
California law requires county officials to keep election materials sealed for 22 months in elections involving public office and six months in all other contests.
The Proposition 50 election takes place on November 4th, so the ballots are scheduled to be destroyed in May.
