UPDATE: RADICALIZED AND LAWLESS —A Disturbing ‘DARVO’ Email from Sheriff Bianco
A Riverside Sheriff who encouraged support on social media to help him put “a felon in the White House” sent me a shocking email in response to my questions about code violation. Now, his militia ties
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UPDATE: I have updated this report to include information on Sheriff Chad Bianco’s ties to paramilitary groups; lawsuits naming him filed on behalf of people who died while incarcerated in Riverside county’s jail system — in 2022 alone, 18 people incarcerated in Riverside county’s jails died, the largest number of deaths in the county’s system since 2005, according to the Guardian.
UPDATE: RADICALIZED AND LAWLESS —A Disturbing ‘DARVO’ Email from Sheriff Bianco
Last night I watched 1959’s Rio Bravo, as I do at least once a year.
I’m a huge Walter Brennan fan, and he plays Stumpy, sidekick to John Wayne, who plays Sheriff John T. Chance. The cast is round out with a brilliant performance by Dean Martin as a lovesick drunk deputy, Dude, and Ricky Nelson, in his all his youthful glory, as the sharpshooter Colorado. Pedro Gonzalez Gonzalez nearly steals the film as a saloon owner, as does Wayne’s love interest, Angie Dickinson, as Feathers (my new self-titled nickname).
In this Howard Hawks film about good and evil in the Old West, Sheriff Chance arrests a killer who shot a man in cold blood, despite the pressures and threats from the killer’s gangster brother. A lot of criminal guns-for-hire are willing to kill to attempt to get his brother out of jail for a “nice fresh fifty dollar gold piece.”
As I was watching the film, admiring the lead characters stand up to ongoing threats on their lives to ensure justice takes place, I kept checking to see if I had received an email back from my request for a statement about a social media post revealing the sheriff of Riverside County to be radicalized and lawless.
The response came today, and it was even more shocking than his original post.
As usual, my podcast partner Jim Stewartson broke the story, which was quickly picked up by all the networks. Here is Jim’s original tweet thread, and here is the video of what Sheriff Bianco stated in uniform that alarmed us so:
“I hope you’re all with me… come along side with me with this venture… I think it’s time we put a felon in the White House. Trump 2024, baby.”
—Sheriff Chad Bianco, Riverside County, in uniform, on social media
As Jim’s tweet thread began to ignite the newsphere, our other podcast partner High Fidelity began texting me screenshots with highlights of all the policies Bianco violated from the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department standards manual.
So I reached out to the department, left messages, and was instructed to send an email.
Here are screenshots from my query, which I also included in a thread:
I tweeted out to the Riverside County DA’s office, as well as left messages with the executive administrator in charge of media outreach for the Riverside County Board of Supervisors. As High Fidelity noted, Bianco appears to have violated these codes: 1030.4, including subsections a,b,c, and 1030.4.1 Unauthorized endorsements or advertisements.
While still thinking about the film last night — where there was no confusion that Sheriff John T. Chance was on the right side of the law, even when outnumbered, and even when his best allies included a disabled man and a deputy with the shakes — I received a response to my query from the Riverside Sheriff.
I expected that Bianco had been sanctioned, or removed from the department without pay pending an investigation. Instead, the message came from Bianco himself, doubling down on his lawlessness, using DARVO techniques to attack me, while also demeaning me in a misogynistic tone very familiar to me in my studies of radicalization.
Here is what he said:
Good afternoon,
Statement from Sheriff Bianco:
The Sheriff is a constitutionally elected political official and can say whatever he wants on his social media pages, which are completely separate from official Sheriff’s Office social media. Maybe you should concern yourself more with UK politics and law enforcement while he attempts to save the USA from socialism.
Your email’s content and context are about as disgustingly biased as you can get. You must be more of a tabloid than a legitimate journalism entity.
Chad Bianco, Sheriff
Riverside County Sheriff's Office
The thing is, as a producer of RADICALIZED Truth Survives podcast, I hear from members of law enforcement grateful to have found our show, because they say that their entire departments have gone QAnon, including supervisors. It’s worth noting that LA County Sheriff Robert Luna recognized the radicalization problem and created a department last year to root out deputy gang factions.
I recognized in Bianco’s statement on social media that likely he has been ingesting right-wing media at toxic levels due to the phrasing he used about “giving alcohol” to felons, and in his response to me, he reveals he thinks he’s “saving the USA from socialism.”
While I don’t take his response personally — I am well aware of my skills as a veteran investigative reporter and how I have adapted them to fight for democracy in the Great Information War — I am troubled by the extent of radicalization in law enforcement.
I am also a student of history and after the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923, Hitler determined the only way he would get into power was by infiltrating law enforcement and government.
Sheriff Bianco’s statement of support for a felon shows not only radicalization but lawlessness, and as I wrote in my original questions to the department:
This sheriff’s mental fitness to provide services as a neutral arbiter of law is questionable at best—are there plans to sanction him for recommending lawlessness?
His response to me indicates he considers himself above the law.
As Jim Stewartson wrote, Bianco answered with “a screed straight out of QAnon… Chad Bianco should be considered armed and dangerous. He needs to turn in his badge and his gun and be escorted out of RSO. This man is a cult member with weapons and squad cars who literally thinks he’s ‘saving the USA from socalism.’”
As the Executive Director of Equality Florida Nadine Smith wrote on Twitter: “Every investigation to which he has presented evidence should be looked into. He is clearly lawless and allied with a violent terrorist organization.”
To her point, in this Guardian expose titled “Far-Right US thinktank to give award to extremist sheriff leading ‘disaster’ office”, we learn that Bianco was a member of two extremist groups, including the Oath Keepers, whose founder Stewart Rhodes is in prison for J6. Here is an excerpt:
The rightwing Claremont Institute will present its 2023 Sheriff Award to the California sheriff Chad Bianco, a former member of two far-right “patriot movement” groups, and whose Riverside county department (RCSD) has been branded a “disaster” by local media amid criminal allegations and a state investigation into death rates in its jail.
Bianco’s award will be presented by the former attorney general Jeff Sessions, who served in the Trump administration, just before the commencement of Claremont’s 2023 Sheriffs Fellowship – a secretive annual program that experts say coaches law enforcement officers in far-right “constitutional sheriff” ideology, which posits that their authority overrides that of the federal US government.
Devin Burghart, the executive director of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, which monitors and researches extremist groups, said that Bianco was one of many sheriffs who “use the far-right ‘constitutional sheriff’ mythology to paper over law enforcement abuses of power”.
Burghart added: “The Claremont Institute’s efforts to elevate far-right sheriffs like Bianco continue a trend that started during the pandemic: the mainstreaming of the ‘constitutional sheriffs’ mythology.”
The Claremont Institute has been described as the “nerve center of the American right”… While Claremont prepares to honor Bianco, the Press-Enterprise, the newspaper of record in Riverside county, last month described his administration as a “complete disaster” in an editorial, citing a long string of incidents involving deputies, and lawsuits arising from a wave of deaths in custody in the county’s jail system.
Bianco is a defendant in at least half a dozen lawsuits filed on behalf of people who died while incarcerated in Riverside county’s jail system, including three filed last month, according to media reports and federal court records.
The plaintiffs include the family of a transgender woman who was placed in a cell with a sex offender who murdered her; in that case, deputies took an hour to notice the homicide had taken place.
In 2022 alone, 18 people incarcerated in Riverside county’s jails died – the largest number of deaths in the county’s system since 2005; another nine people died in custody this year, according to county records.—Jason Wilson for the Guardian, November 6, 2023
According to the Guardian report, multiple members of the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department have been arrested and charged with drug-related felonies, including one corrections deputy who was indicted for allegedly working for a drug-trafficking organization.
Late Tuesday afternoon, I received a response regarding Bianco’s public statements from the executive administrator from the county, Brooke Federico, which stated:
Hello, Ms. Cuda.
The position of sheriff in Riverside County is an elected position, that is to say that he is accountable to the voters of Riverside County.
I don’t have additional information to share, as he is a countywide elected official.
Regards,
Brooke Federico
It appears by Bianco’s own statement and by the county’s statement that he operates above the law.
It’s funny that last night, as I thought about the John T. Chance’s of the world, and how I was once secure that our agencies were there to protect us, I tweeted two comments:
We’ve been a target nation of information warfare for a decade, and I fail to understand the lack of urgency from our leaders in putting up a defense.
The journalists, scholars, and pro-democracy activists with the guts to defend our nation from the Great Information War — from attacks by hostile foreign states and US traitors aligned with our enemies — are on our own as we do this work — unprotected from retaliatory attacks.
Bianco’s DARVO attack on me — deny, attack, reverse victim and offender — is uncomforting, to say the least.
But it does indicate the depth of the man’s confusion. He refers to the Constitution, while wearing a gun and a badge, doubling down on his support for a convicted felon in our highest office.
The casualties of the Great Information War resurrect as foot soldiers of fascism.
He is unfit for purpose.
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More info about Bette Dangerous - This magazine is written by Heidi Siegmund Cuda, an Emmy-award winning investigative reporter/producer, author, and veteran music and nightlife columnist. She is the cohost of RADICALIZED Truth Survives, an investigative show about disinformation and is part of the Byline Media team. Thank you for your support of independent investigative journalism.
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UK politics?