Michael Gates calls out AG Rob Bonta of trying to shut down Sheriff Bianco’s 45K Prop 50 vote probe.
Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco accused Attorney General Rob Bonta of trying to intimidate him into halting an investigation into thousands of questionable votes from Proposition 50’s special election. Attorney General candidate Michael Gates says it’s not the first time the Democrat has used those tactics.
The Republican gubernatorial candidate made the claim during a press conference Friday. He revealed that a judge ruled in favor of his investigation. The review focuses on a 45,896-vote discrepancy uncovered after the special election voters approved in November 2025. (RELATED: Newsom’s Latest Budget Reveals Historic Record of Deficit and Govt. Overspending)
“The registrar of voters [ROV] maintain handwritten logs of the total number of ballots coming into the ROV. An audit of those logs received from the Riverside County registrar of voters allegedly shows 611,428 ballots were cast,” Bianco explained. “But 657,322 votes were reported and certified to the Secretary of State.”
“The response from the registrar of voters was that it did not rely on logs and that it is a machine count that reflects a much smaller deviation that he chalks up to acceptable human error,” Bianco added. “I hope we can all agree there is no acceptable error, small or large in our elections, let alone a 45,000 vote difference.”
Gates, who served as Huntington Beach’s city attorney for over a decade before briefly joining the U.S. Department of Justice, has faced similar tactics from Bonta.
In late 2023, the Huntington Beach City Council placed Measure 1 on the ballot. The charter amendment would require photo identification to vote in city elections starting in 2026. After voters approved it on March 5, 2024, Bonta and Secretary of State Shirley Weber sued the city.
Bonta and Weber claimed the voter ID requirement conflicted with state election law. During that lawsuit, Gates told the California Courier that Bonta tried to intimidate him through letters.
“He would send letters all the time trying to threaten us and bully us and intimidate us when we knew what the law was. I knew what the law was,” Gates said. “So when he was writing those letters of threats and intimidations, he was writing them to me as a city attorney of Huntington Beach. He was trying to intimidate us into not adopting a voter ID law, for instance. And there’s a whole host of other issues that he was trying to threaten us with.”
“He definitely takes employees’ bully tactics to try to threaten people rather than allowing investigations, rightful investigations, to proceed,” Gates added. “Why in the world would the attorney general, the top law enforcement agent in the state of California, threaten a Riverside sheriff? Why would he threaten a sheriff’s department who has every reason to believe, every basis to believe that there’s a legitimate concern and a proper basis for an investigation?”
The investigation began after the Riverside Election Integrity Team alleged more than 45,000 excess votes. City election official Art Tinoco denied the discrepancies, saying the group misinterpreted the Election Day count, according to Fox News.
During the press conference, Bianco said Bonta sent him multiple letters. Bonta’s office provided the letters to the Courier when asked for a statement.
In the first letter dated Feb. 26, Bonta claimed there had been no widespread fraud in the United States or California. He directed Bianco to preserve all ballots and materials and to pause any further action.
A follow-up letter arrived on March 4. In it, Bonta said he learned Bianco was ignoring his order to stop and planned to seize ballots the next day.
“Let me be clear: this is unacceptable. Your decision to seize ballots and begin counting them … sets a dangerous precedent and will only sow distrust in our elections,” Bonta wrote.
“You are also flagrantly violating my directives, notwithstanding clear, express authority in the California Constitution and the Government Code giving the Attorney General ‘direct supervision’ over your office and authorizing me to ‘direct the activities of any sheriff relative to the investigation or detection of crime’ in the county,” Bonta added.
The third and final letter addressed Bianco’s cooperation before a judge weighed in.
Gates told the Courier he supports Bianco continuing the investigation and criticized Bonta’s leadership.
“For Bonta to step in and try to run interference on that is very suspicious. I think he was put in office in 2021 by Newsom to actually run interference on these types of inquiries, these types of investigations, these types of questions to just run interference. To shut these types of things down and run cover,” Gates said. “I say that because he also did that with taxpayer dollars.”
“We’re now learning that there’s up to $500 billion of taxpayer money, hard-earned taxpayer money, that’s been lost through waste, fraud, and abuse. All that money ran through Sacramento. Our tax dollars ran through Sacramento, and it ballooned while Bonta has been in office,” Gates added. “So what’s happening in Riverside is, on the one hand, very disappointing that our top elections official is not allowing an investigation, a rightful investigation to proceed. But on the other hand, it’s classic Bonta. Classic corruption, classic Bonta.”
With the court ruling in his favor, Bianco said he is waiting for a special master to be appointed so the count can continue.
In response to Bianco’s comments Friday, Bonta told the Courier he was surprised and disappointed. He claimed his office was stonewalled while trying to work cooperatively and called the warrants legally deficient.
“Sheriff Bianco’s investigation is unprecedented in both scope and scale — and appears not to be based on facts or evidence but on unfounded allegations that have already been refuted by the Riverside Registrar of Voters. There is no indication, anywhere in the United States, of widespread voter fraud. Counts, recounts, hand counts, audits, and court cases all support this,” Bonta said.
Bonta added that the matter is ongoing and his office will take further action “to ensure its appropriate resolution.”
