Overview
- The California Supreme Court, which intervened Wednesday, ordered Sheriff Chad Bianco to halt his 2025 election investigation and preserve all seized materials.
- Unsealed warrants showed investigators leaned on a local activist group’s claim of a roughly 45,000‑vote overcount, checked a probable‑cause box without naming a specific crime, and filed affidavits that lacked routine prosecutor sign‑off.
- Deputies seized nearly 650,000 ballots, including about 1,000 boxes in March and 426 more later, even as the county registrar said the real variance was about 103 ballots using the office’s standard count.
- The justices set an expedited schedule that includes an April 15 filing deadline and raised the option of appointing a special master to hold the ballots, a step aimed at protecting chain of custody and voter privacy under state law.
- Bianco is a Republican candidate for governor and disputes the attorney general’s account of whether he paused earlier, a political backdrop that has intensified scrutiny after news outlets won access to the once‑sealed warrants.