The Attorney General’s Zoom snafu

Good morning, it’s Wednesday, April 1 and you can expect a real Goldilocks kind of day — not too cloudy, not too sunny, just right. 

In today’s newsletter, we’re making sense of Rob Bonta and Chad Bianco’s ongoing legal skirmish, plus the latest on the L.A. Zoo’s departed elephants and new data on L.A. restaurants.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta has positioned himself as the leader of the state’s legal fight against President Trump, and likes to trumpet that his office has filed one lawsuit per week against the Trump administration. 

He also takes on Trump’s proxies, and has lately been trying to keep Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco from conducting what Bonta calls a “misguided investigation” of purported election fraud in last fall’s approval of Proposition 50, which redrew Congressional districts to favor Democrats. 

Bianco, an avowed Trump supporter, is also a leading candidate to become California’s next governor, and his election probe has generated headlines and boosted his profile.

Bonta’s legal offensive against Bianco hit an embarrassing snag last Friday in a virtual Riverside County courtroom, when Bianco’s lawyer and a judge assembled on a Zoom for a key hearing, only to have to reschedule it because the Attorney General’s lawyers didn’t show up. 

“I don’t know where they were,” Bianco’s lawyer, Robert Tyler, told L.A. Material. “But they weren’t in the same courtroom I was.” 

Bonta’s lawyers later said in an email filed in court that they were provided incorrect information about the meeting ID.

“Our team called in for the hearing and was continuously on hold,” Deputy Attorney General Anne Bellows later wrote to Tyler. 

The courtroom snafu adds a touch of bureaucratic comedy to a dispute in which both sides have traded accusations of abusing power and trampling democratic norms.

Bianco began investigating the ballots cast on Prop 50 after a citizens’ group claimed there were irregularities.

The group compared the total number of ballots reported to the Secretary of State with the totals reflected on internal logs at the Riverside County Registrar of Voters, and claimed there was a discrepancy of about 45,000 ballots. 

Riverside County voting officials have countered that the actual discrepancy is closer to 103 ballots. Based in part on the citizens’ audit, sheriff’s investigators obtained two search warrants to take custody of the ballots and re-tabulate them. 

Bonta interceded, filing petitions in both Riverside Superior Court and the state Supreme Court to halt the sheriff’s probe on the grounds that it is an “unprecedented Constitutional emergency.” 

“Let me be clear: this is unacceptable. Your decision to seize ballots and begin counting them based on vague, unsubstantiated allegations about irregularities in the November special election results sets a dangerous precedent and will only sow distrust in our elections,” Bonta said in a March 4 letter.

But the sheriff’s lawyer said it was Bonta who was running afoul of the civic process.

“To me, transparency is the only thing that’s going to preserve our elections and our democratic principles,” said Tyler. “You have to stop and ask, why in the world is the Attorney General so bent on preventing a count?”

Remember Billy and Tina, the pair of aging elephants transferred from the L.A. Zoo to Tulsa last year amid heated controversy? (A quick refresher: The two pachyderms were the last holdovers from the L.A. Zoo’s contentious elephant program. Prior to the transfer to Tulsa, animal advocates, celebrity friends and members of the City Council argued that the giant mammals would be better off in an elephant sanctuary than another zoo, but that push was unsuccessful and they were shipped to the Tulsa Zoo last May, where they would have a larger social herd.)

Unfortunately, however, life in Oklahoma has brought new problems, animal advocates told the L.A. Times. Citing a veteran elephant consultant, the paper reports that Tina is battling a uterine infection and Billy “could face invasive sperm extractions.”

A recent spate of high-profile restaurant closures might give the impression that L.A.'s restaurant scene is on the decline.

But the picture is more complicated, according to new data. An analysis by Crosstown L.A. found that restaurant openings are at an all-time high in the city, largely thanks to a surge in takeout-only “ghost kitchens” and eateries that are officially restaurants though they have lean staffing and limited, sometimes nonexistent, seating.

Crosstown characterizes the restaurant surge as a bright spot in an otherwise bleak landscape, though the numbers are a bit knottier than they seem at first glance: Two ghost kitchen facilities, Beverly Bites on Pico and Echo Park Eats on Sunset Boulevard, account for nearly 100 restaurants, according to the story.

BALLOT WARS: President Trump signed an executive order Tuesday aimed at cracking down on mail-in voting; California officials have vowed to fight the order.

MAKING THE TREK: The Art Newspaper put together their annual survey of the world’s 100 most visited art museums, and a handful of L.A.-area institutions made the list, including the Getty Center (58th place), the Huntington (70th) and LACMA (99th). 

GO EAST, YOUNG TAB: Los Angeles-based TMZ has turned its attention to a different kind of celebrity: members of Congress. The outlet has been slamming lawmakers for skipping town amid a partial government shutdown, and now has both a producer and a photographer on Capitol Hill, NOTUS reports. 

FROM HIGHLAND PARK TO MAR VISTA: A handful of local tastemakers share their favorite L.A. burritos with T Magazine, in a largely unsurprising but still delicious-sounding rundown. 

PLAYING WITH FIRE: Page Six Hollywood warns they might bring back an old school New York Post feature called “Liar’s Corner,” where they blast “ridiculous reps who fibbed to the column.” Up first: an unnamed UTA agent who allegedly called a Feb. Post story about Gwyneth Paltrow closing in on a deal to star in a film adaption of Belle Burden’s buzzy memoir “reckless” and "inaccurate." An announcement hit the trades with the same info a month later, Page Six reports.

For today’s peek inside our subscriber-only Discord server, a bountiful citrus report from @hunterowens in #plants-and-animals:

AND FINALLY… A poem to pair with your morning coffee: “Amuse-Bouche” by Max Ritvo.

Enjoying this newsletter? Forward it to a friend. Did someone forward this newsletter to you? Sign up here. Want to help make this work possible? Upgrade your subscription.