April 9 at 10:02 AM
Judge Unseals Warrants Tied To California Sheriff’s Allegations of Fraud In 2025 Special Election Case
In statement to the Los Angeles Times,David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research and a former senior trial attorney overseeing voting enforcement for the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, echoed some of Bonta’s concerns, calling the probable cause in the warrants “incredibly thin.”
“For a warrant, you need to establish probable cause that a crime has been committed and there’s evidence that you need to seize related to that crime,” Becker said after reviewing the warrants.
“This is the same conspiracy-theory fueled stuff that we’ve seen elsewhere,” Becker said. “It’s really unfortunate to see law enforcement officers fall victim to these same easily disprovable conspiracy theories and then misuse the warrant process with very flimsy claims before a friendly judge in order to seize materials that were already transparent and reviewed multiple times.”
https://www.foxla.com/news/riverside-sheriffs-chad-bianco-election-investigation