Gov. Gavin Newsom said this week that he is deploying election lawyers to “key battleground districts” in California and reminded President Trump that illegally seizing ballots is now a state felony, a statement that drew sharp pushback from a federal prosecutor and reignited debate over a Riverside County ballot dispute that began earlier this year.
“A warning to Donald Trump,” Newsom wrote on X. “I’m deploying election lawyers to key battleground districts in California to protect every vote. And I just made it a FELONY to illegally seize ballots.”
The felony provision Newsom referenced is AB 282, legislation he signed in mid-September as part of a broader package of election-related bills. The law makes it a state felony to seize, or cause the seizure of, ballots, election records, or certified voting technology before election results are certified.
The Riverside County seizure
The law followed an incident in Riverside County, where Sheriff Chad Bianco seized roughly 650,000 ballots from the Proposition 50 election in February 2026 after discovering a 45,896-vote discrepancy in the county’s initial ballot count. Days after Newsom signed AB 282, the California Supreme Court ruled that Bianco’s seizure had been unlawful under existing law.
Pushback from federal prosecutor
Bill Essayli, First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, replied directly to Newsom’s post, questioning whether the governor’s pledge to “protect every vote” extended to concerns about noncitizen voting.
“You’re going to protect every legal or illegal vote? What about California citizens whose votes are being diluted by ineligible voters? Do their constitutional rights matter?”
Essayli’s comments reflect an ongoing federal dispute over noncitizen registration and voting in California. The Department of Justice has pursued litigation seeking to address what it says are suspected noncitizen ballots in the state.
Earlier this month, President Trump warned California election officials that they could face lengthy prison terms if they count mail ballots from more than 20,000 people federal agencies have identified as likely noncitizens. A federal district court subsequently denied the DOJ’s emergency request to sequester those ballots. Essayli announced afterward that the Solicitor General had authorized an immediate appeal, and the department filed a notice of appeal seeking an emergency order from the Ninth Circuit.
Critics of Newsom’s statement online also argued that a California state statute cannot override federal election law or federal investigations under the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which establishes federal law as supreme over conflicting state law.
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