Riv. Sheriff's election investigation paused, warrants unsealed

On April 7, Riverside Superior Judge Gail O'Rane ordered the public release of the three warrants which authorized the Riverside County Sheriff's Office's investigation into the November election.

Inland Empire Law Weekly is working to obtain a copy of the search warrants.

A separate order from the California Supreme Court on April 8 ordered the Sheriff's investigation to be paused until they reviewed the California Department of Justice's petition to stop it.

"To permit further consideration of the petition for review, real parties, their agents, employees, and anyone acting on their behalf are hereby ordered to pause the investigation into the November 2025 special election and preserve all seized items," the Supreme Court wrote.

The investigation

The Riverside Sheriff's Office executed warrants on Feb. 9 and Feb. 23 to seize ballots from the Riverside Registrar of Voters. The Office wanted to recount the number of ballots received and reconcile them with the number of ballots counted. The Riverside Record first reported the seizure.

The Sheriff's Office started recounting ballots, but paused after being directed to stop by Attorney General Rob Bonta. Bianco then requested a recount under the authority of Riverside Superior Judge Jay Kiel. Kiel approved the recount in a warrant signed March 19. Kiel paused executing the recount until Bonta's petition is resolved, according to a document filed by Robert Tyler, Bianco's attorney.

Documents from the investigation, including summaries of an investigator's interviews with county staff in 2023 and a local group's recount of publicly reported data from the November 2025 election, was inadvertently released last week.

Riv. Sheriff’s attorney accidentally released election investigation documentsOne spreadsheet indicates that REIT’s initial recount was wrong. REIT first said 45,000 ballots appeared in the final tally. A spreadsheet with the date Feb. 13, 2026, indicated they were off by 18,000, because they did not count ballots collected at the drop box at the Registrar of Votes.Inland Empire Law WeeklyAidan McGloin

Warrants unsealed

O'Rane's order is in response to a petition filed April 1 by a coalition of media organizations, including The Riverside Record, CalMatters, the parent company of The Press-Enterprise, Politico, the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times.

On April 2, Riverside Sheriff Chad Bianco wrote a letter to O'Rane recommending the search warrants and affidavits be released.

"This Sheriff's Office agrees that unsealing the requested records now that the evidence has been collected and is being maintained securely is appropriate. We desire to ensure the public has confidence in legal elections. It is likewise important for the public to have confidence in the integrity of this investigative process and the outcome. Transparency is especially important here because the underlying dispute has played out publicly for months, including in public meetings and through public statements by multiple officials," the letter reads.

The letter continues to say that the warrants were sealed to protect the integrity of the collected evidence. Now that the warrants are safely stored in a Sheriff's facility with controlled access and video monitoring, Bianco wrote that the sealing of the search warrants are no longer necessary.

O'Rane's order is brief.

"As a general matter, 'unless confidentiality is required by law, court records are presumed to be open,'" she wrote, quoting the California Rules of Court.

"There is no overriding interest that overcomes the right of public access to the warrants. After execution and return of a warrant, the records of the warrant are generally public record," she wrote, citing the Penal Code.

"Here, there is no opposition to unsealing the warrants, and after reviewing the warrants, the court has not identified any information for which there is an overriding interest that overcomes the right of public access and no articulable reason to keep the warrants sealed," she wrote.

Read O'Rane's order and Bianco's letter below.

Unseal Search Warrants - OrderUnseal Search Warrants - Order.pdf313 KBdownload-circle

Supreme Court reviews case

On April 8, the California Supreme Court agreed to hear Bonta's argument to stop Bianco's investigation.

Bonta's March 27 petition argues that he has the power to supervise sheriffs under the state law and California Constitution. Bonta cites the California Constitution, Article V, Section 13, which says “The Attorney General shall have direct supervision over every district attorney and sheriff,” and Government Code Section 12560, which says “The Attorney General has direct supervision over the sheriffs.”

The Supreme Court didn't rule on Bonta's petition yet. The court sealed Bonta's petition for review and Bianco's reply. Both documents were sealed because they included information from the search warrants, which the court believed were still sealed. Nothing filed in an appellate court can have sealed records from a lower court under the California Rules of Court.

The court denied Bianco's request to seal his declaration, and the declaration of his attorney.

The justices also addressed a separate petition to release court documents filed in the Supreme Court. Inland Empire Law Weekly is a part of the media coalition that brought the petition. The parties have 48 hours to address whether the search warrants properly remain sealed, and whether an order from the Supreme Court unsealing the search warrants would require the unsealing of the other sealed documents.

Read the Supreme Court decision below.

Supreme Court OrderSupreme Court Order.pdf83 KBdownload-circle