Riverside County, California sheriff Chad Bianco is definitely one of those guys. You know the ones I mean. The kind of “law and order” hypocrite who loves the law as long as it can be used to hurt the people he doesn’t like and protect the people he does like. In other words, he’s a guy who loves the stuff Trump does that violates the law because those laws aren’t part of his narrow “rule of law” view.
You may remember Sheriff Bianco from his hysterical comments in response to California governor Gavin Newsom signing a law that would ban law enforcement officers from hiding behind masks — something prompted by the federal government’s reliance on masked kidnapping squads to round up undocumented migrants.
“They didn’t ban criminals from wearing masks, they didn’t tell criminals that they had to identify themselves,” Bianco said while campaigning in Northern California on Friday. “Every single person that voted for that needs to be eliminated in the next election. Anyone that votes for those people are absolute idiots.”
No, this law didn’t do this. Bianco is right about that. But that’s because it didn’t need to. California law already outlaws mask use by criminals who aren’t working for the federal government. That’s why the new law didn’t need to do something that was already being done — something the “absolute idiots” cheering on/voting for Chad Bianco might want to remember the next time they storm the Capitol building and/or engage in other racist, violent acts.
Bianco is in the bag for Trump. This is not disputable. Shortly after the Trump administration engaged in the (very likely illegal) seizure of ballots in Georgia (a transparently vindictive act prompted by the Georgia’s secretary of state refusing to “find” the ~12,000 votes needed to flip the state in Trump’s favor following the 2020 presidential election), Chad Bianco (who’s currently running for Congress) decided he needed to right some wrongs by doing the wrong (and illegal!) thing by seizing more than 600,000 ballots from election offices.
Bianco claimed this was necessary to investigate “irregularities” apparently only he had witnessed during the state’s 2025 Proposition 50 voting. As is to be expected by all the spectacularly stupid and slimy shit going on here, Prop 50 was put up for a vote in response to rampant mid-term gerrymandering by a suddenly desperate GOP.
The state Attorney General, Rob Bonta, immediately stepped in to ask the courts to block any further actions by Sheriff Bianco, pointing out that this was something that had never happened in the state’s long history of democratic voting and employment of various sheriffs.
Bianco continued to insist this was a necessary part of protecting the integrity of elections and waved away multiple issues raised by his actions, including his apparent judge-shopping trip which put his (plainly defective) warrant in the hands of judge who the sheriff had endorsed during the judge’s 2022 election campaign.
The state’s top court has sided with reason, democracy, and logic in general, as Cal Matters reports:
Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco broke the law and created “a substantial risk to election integrity” when he seized more than 650,000 ballots California’s Supreme Court ruled on Thursday morning.
The justices ruled unanimously that Bianco must return the ballots to the county’s top election administrator and “refrain from further handling” them. In a second ruling, the court also held that Bianco broke the law when he ignored directives from the state’s attorney general to hold off on his plans to execute a search warrant to seize the ballots last March.
That’s right: Bianco lost twice in one day in the same court. That’s because his obviously illegal act generated plenty of litigation, all of which Bianco seems doomed to lose.
It’s hard to tell from the filings which “you lose, Bianco” ruling came first, but we’ll take a brief look at both.
This one [PDF] was filed by Riverside County voters. The California Supreme Court says some stuff that’s repeated in its other decision, but it’s the sort of thing dipshits like Sheriff Bianco need to be told more than twice.
We hold that the seizure of the ballots was unlawful.California law long has recognized that voted ballots require special care and handling to safeguard them from alteration or tampering. Consistent with this principle, the Elections Code narrowly limits the circumstances in which a court may order the production of ballots for inspection, and even in those narrow circumstances, requires that ballots remain in the physical custody of the responsible elections official. Bianco’s seizure of the ballots violated the plain language of section 15551, subdivision (d), commanding that “[i]n no event” shall voted ballots “be taken from the custody of the elections official.” This provision manifests a legislative intent that ballots remain in the elections official’s custody even in the event of a criminal investigation.
Even if Bianco were doing more than pretending whatever “irregularities” necessitated this seizure, it still wouldn’t matter. At best, Bianco could perhaps secure access to them via a judicial warrant, but state law makes it clear the ballots were to remain in the possession of election officials.
The court orders Bianco to return the ballots and refrain from doing anything else with the records but that. The second ruling [PDF] addresses the challenge raised by State AG Rob Bonta. The end result is the same, but the beginning is a bit more interesting, as the court notes it has never been asked before to determine whether or not an AG has the power to issue “binding directions” to a state sheriff because… well… it has never seen this particular form of bullshit from a sheriff before.
In this case, time is of the essence and without the court’s intervention, Sheriff Bianco would likely just continue to ignore the AG’s order to return ballots and preserve records of this so-called “investigation.” While the AG is in the right, the extreme abnormality of this situation places Bonta’s attempt to rein in Bianco in a legal dead zone. The court says Bianco loses because he cannot possibly point to precedent that justifies his actions or his refusal to comply with the state AG’s orders:
Lastly, we address whether the Attorney General has an adequate remedy at law. We conclude he does not. With the November 2026 General Election nearing, the Attorney General reasonably regards respondents’ investigation as requiring his immediate attention and prompt intervention. Only this court can provide a definitive explication of the Attorney General’s powers and duties and appropriately tailored writ relief. In light of the exigencies involved here, no other remedy would be as effective as a writ issued by this court in securing the timely and conclusive relief needed.
Of course, this isn’t over yet. Bianco has already made it clear he intends to appeal both of these decisions. But his success relies on the US Supreme Court being interested, much less willing, to help a pro-MAGA sheriff extricate himself from a mess of his own making. I doubt it will, even if the resident anything-for-Trump justices will fall all over themselves to write lengthy dissents about the court’s refusal to carry water for a sheriff who clearly has no respect for the rule of law.