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‘We’re so fortunate to have Chad Bianco,’ said judge who later signed warrants in sheriff’s election probe

April 6, 2026

Jay Kiel praised Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco when running for a seat on the Riverside Superior Court bench.

Almost four years later, Kiel — now a judge — approved search warrants in a Riverside County Sheriff’s Department’s investigation that’s seized more than 650,000 ballots from the November election.

Kiel’s past support of Bianco, a 2026 Republican gubernatorial candidate, worries those who see a potential conflict of interest in what’s become a politically charged investigation with broad implications for the role of law enforcement in elections.

“I do have concerns about it,” said Sky Allen, executive director of the progressive group Inland Empire United. “I’m not a lawyer … but I do think it’s inappropriate and it reads very political.”

A judge’s past praise of a public official “does not automatically require recusal,” Sean McMorris, transparency, ethics and accountability program manager at Common Cause California, said via email. “However, it does heighten the need to carefully consider both actual impartiality and the appearance of impartiality, especially when that official is involved in a matter before the court. In high-profile or sensitive cases, public confidence in the process is critical, and even the perception of bias can be significant.”

Kiel is barred by the state judicial ethics code from commenting on continuing cases, Kareem Gongora, a Superior Court spokesperson, said via email.

In an emailed statement, the sheriff’s media information bureau said the initial search warrant in the investigation was assigned to Kiel because he was “the rotation judge of the day.”

“The sheriff has no reason to know who the judge of the day is, and the investigators did not know that day and did not try to determine who the judge of the day was.”

While the name of the duty judge — responsible for handling emergency requests — is posted publicly, “Sheriff Bianco has no reason to access that information and had no personal involvement with this investigation,” read the statement, which did not address allegations of bias involving the judge and Bianco.

Kiel’s past praise of Bianco, who is running as a Republican for governor, adds another flashpoint to a contentious showdown over Bianco’s investigation, which seized more than 650,000 ballots cast by Riverside County voters in November’s Proposition 50 special election.

A statewide ballot measure that redrew California’s congressional districts to favor Democrats after Texas lawmakers revised their districts to favor House Republicans, Proposition 50 passed with 64% of the vote statewide and 56% of the vote in Riverside County.

The election’s outcome is not disputed. But the Riverside Election Integrity Team, a citizen’s watchdog group, said there’s an unexplained gap of roughly 45,000 ballots in Riverside County between ballots cast and ballots received in November.

County Registrar of Voters Art Tinoco refutes that, arguing the team’s analysis is based on a flawed understanding of election data. The actual gap, Tinoco said, is 103 votes, well within the acceptable margin of error established by the California secretary of state’s office.

The sheriff has said his investigation will determine whether the gap alleged by the team exists and if so, what caused it.

To that end, the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department went to court between February and March to obtain three search warrants to seize the county’s 650,000-plus Proposition 50 ballots and related materials. Kiel authorized all three warrants.

A former Riverside County prosecutor under District Attorney Mike Hestrin, Kiel ran for judge in 2022 on a slate with three other judges who, like Kiel, were endorsed by Bianco, the Riverside County Republican Party and law enforcement groups.

In May 2022, Kiel was a guest on 412 Church Temecula Valley Pastor Tim Thompson’s “Our Watch” program. A Bianco ally, Thompson is a Christian conservative with strong ties to the highest ranks of the Make America Great Again movement backing President Donald Trump.

During the roughly 23-minute interview broadcast on YouTube, Kiel said Riverside County residents sometimes don’t realize “how fortunate they are.”

“They have a sheriff, Chad Bianco, and they have a district attorney, Mike Hestrin,” Kiel said. “These two are unbelievable when it comes to enforcing the law. People may give them a hard time because they’re doing their jobs.

“ … Chad Bianco and all his deputies, they go out and they aggressively enforce the law,” Kiel added.

He also drew a contrast between Riverside County and Los Angeles County, where he said law enforcement “is not getting the respect” of the District Attorney’s Office, led at the time by progressive-minded DA George Gascón.

“We’re so fortunate to have Chad Bianco,” Kiel said. “We’re so fortunate to have Mike Hestrin.”

At the end of the interview, he noted that the slate on which he ran was endorsed by Hestrin and Bianco.

The Riverside court system uses a rotating set of judges “to ensure timely judicial availability for urgent and time-sensitive matters,” said Gongora, the court’s spokesperson.

The duty judge rotation is set in advance “through an internal administrative process that considers caseloads and judicial availability,” Gongora added.

Once the rotation schedule is finalized, the court sends it monthly to the Sheriff’s Department, the district attorney and the probation department “to facilitate communication and ensure the prompt handling of urgent matters across justice system partners,” he said.

The duty judge’s name and courtroom are posted on a sign in a small office on the first floor of the downtown Riverside Hall of Justice, not far from sheriff’s headquarters.

Bianco’s investigation is on hold pending the outcome of several court challenges, including one before Riverside Superior Court Judge Dorothy McLaughlin, who was appointed to the bench in 2018 by then-Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown.

The courts “are our last line of defense in the maintenance of democratic institutions,” McMorris, of Common Cause California, said. “There is no place for politics in the application of the law.”

Judges “have a legal and ethical obligation” to recuse themselves if they’re unable to separate their politics from their legal obligations, he said.

“Recusal is not a failure; it is a safeguard of integrity,” McMorris added. “By contrast, failing to recuse when impartiality is compromised risks lasting harm to the justice system, undermines democratic institutions and erodes public trust in the courts.”

McMorris said “it’s difficult to say definitively at this stage” when Kiel should have recused himself.

“Ultimately, the key issue is whether a reasonable observer would question the judge’s impartiality,” he said. “I don’t think we yet have enough information to make that determination.”

Once the search warrants are unsealed — the goal of a media coalition that includes the Southern California News Group’s parent company — and the underlying evidence is reviewed, it will be easier to assess whether the decision to authorize them was within the range of what another judge would reasonably have done,” McMorris said.

“If the evidentiary basis appears unusually weak or unsupported, that could strengthen concerns about whether recusal was warranted.”

Allen, of Inland Empire United, who spoke at a news conference by critics of the sheriff’s investigation, said she thinks there’s a conflict of interest with Kiel’s involvement in the case.

“I don’t know if I know quite enough about how those things work to make a super-strong statement,” she said. “But I do think (Kiel’s) involved enough and probably someone else should take it from here.”

Staff Writer Brian Rokos contributed to this report.

Orange County Register

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‘We’re so fortunate to have Chad Bianco,’ said judge who later signed warrants in sheriff’s election probe

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