“Send lawyers, guns and money,” rock legend Warren Zevon once urged in a song.
Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco has raised at least $1.6 million for his 2026 campaign for governor. Now he wants help paying his lawyers.
The Republican, who led Democratic frontrunner Katie Porter in a recent poll, started a legal defense fund in late October, campaign finance records show. The fund allows donors to help pay the sheriff’s legal bills — for what, it’s not clear.
In an emailed response to questions about the fund, Bianco said: “This is your typical biased, selective reporting.”
“This is common to most all campaigns,” he said, adding that the fund is unrelated to his work with the county.
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A check of campaign finance paperwork found no record of legal defense funds for Porter, Steve Hilton, Xavier Becerra, Antonio Villaraigosa or other 2026 gubernatorial hopefuls.
Elected officials with legal defense funds include U.S. Sen Adam Schiff, D-California.The federal justice department is investigating Schiff, a prominent critic of President Donald Trump, for mortgage fraud, an allegation the senator denies.
There’s nothing to suggest Bianco, who routinely assails Democrats for ruining California, is under criminal investigation. But the outspoken sheriff is dealing with civil litigation.
In August, Democrat Stephen J. Cloobeck, who recently dropped out of the governor’s race, sued Bianco alleging the sheriff broke state campaign finance law by wearing his uniform at campaign events. Bianco dismissed Cloobeck’s lawsuit as a publicity stunt.
The sheriff also is facing a lawsuit Vem Miller, who was arrested outside a 2024 Trump rally in the Coachella Valley after deputies found a gun in his car.
At the time, Bianco said his deputies “probably stopped another assassination attempt” against Trump.
Miller, who accuses Bianco of slandering him, denies wanting to kill Trump and has not been charged with trying to assassinate the president. He has said he carries weapons for protection and that he told deputies about his gun at a rally checkpoint.
The California attorney general’s office is conducting a civil rights investigation over conditions in Riverside County jails, which Bianco’s department manages. The department also faces multiple lawsuits from families of those who died in its jails.
Unless Riverside County supervisors decide otherwise, Bianco won’t have to pay for his legal defense in the jail lawsuits. That’s because the county’s legal team defends his department in court, as it would any county employee sued for actions or conduct pertaining to their job.
While donors can give to a legal defense fund just as they would to a candidate’s campaign, the legal fund and the campaign account must be separate, said Sean McMorris, transparency, ethics, and accountability program manager for California Common Cause, a pro-government transparency nonprofit organization.
The legal fund’s donors also have to be disclosed, and money from the fund must be spent on legal expenses, McMorris said, adding the spending is limited to what a legal defense is reasonably expected to cost.
As of Tuesday, Nov. 25, there’s no online record of donors or donations to Bianco’s legal fund.
Once the matter that spurred the legal fund is resolved, a candidate must disband the fund within 90 days and return leftover money on a prorated basis to donors, McMorris said.
Legal defense funds pose the same ethical questions as normal campaign accounts, according to McMorris.
“It’s money coming from other people,” he said. “So there’s always the issue of — it’s a way to potentially curry favor with a person in a position of power.”
Often politicians will seek legal defense fund donations “from special interests who want favors from these politicians or favorable votes from these politicians at some point,” McMorris added.