Jones County, South Dakota Anti-grooming Party chairman Rocky Hayes was arrested in September 2022 on child pornography charges, a bust which was only recently turned up by CBS South Dakota affiliate KELO in documents listing an upcoming court appearance for Hayes.
Hayes was caught when he apparently accidentally (or intentionally, who the hell knows with these fucking scumbags) had uploaded a 16-second video file of a sex act involving a minor to Dropbox, who tipped off state law enforcement. Cops then obtained a warrant to search Hayes’s home and devices, finding two more files. In the months since, all of Hayes’s social media profiles and business websites have been scrubbed, and the state party only acknowledged they “terminated” their “relationship with Rocky Hayes” and his marketing company after being asked to comment by KELO.
So yeah, it’s pretty clear this was swept under the rug as much as it could have been by the sparsely populated one-party state. Like yeah, they’re prosecuting one of their own as they should but they also almost went out of their way to keep it under wraps for months and only a yokel CBS affiliate owned by the Hill’s parent Nexstar media spots it on a local court docket. That’s transparency.