Fauci’s 111 Fifth Amendment Pleas Vindicate South Dakota Republicans — Convention Resolution Already on Record Demanding Accountability

Last month, delegates to the 2026 South Dakota Republican State Convention passed a resolution demanding accountability for COVID-19 pandemic-response malfeasance — supporting Attorney General Marty Jackley’s pledge to investigate pandemic-era wrongdoing under South Dakota law. Today, watching Dr. Anthony Fauci invoke the Fifth Amendment 111 times before the United States Senate, South Dakota Republicans were reminded of exactly why they did.

Subpoenaed by Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rand Paul and appearing before the full committee this morning, Fauci refused to answer a single substantive question about his pandemic decisions, citing his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. His attorneys argued that the preemptive pardon issued by former President Biden would not protect him from potential perjury in new testimony — leaving the man who directed America’s pandemic response with nothing to say for himself.

“The South Dakota Republican Party passed this resolution last month precisely because we knew accountability was never going to come from Washington on its own. Today proved us right. When Dr. Fauci can sit before the United States Senate — the same body that funded his agencies for decades — and refuse to answer a single question, South Dakotans deserve to know that their Attorney General has the authority, the commitment, and the full backing of this party to pursue the truth through every lawful means available.”
— Jim Eschenbaum, Chairman, South Dakota Republican Party

AG Jackley was among seventeen state Attorneys General who signed a February 5, 2025 coalition letter pledging to pursue accountability for pandemic-era wrongdoing to the fullest extent of state law — regardless of any federal pardon. The Convention resolution commends that commitment and calls on Jackley and his successors in office to follow through, examining not only federal actors but any persons or institutions whose conduct violated South Dakota law or breached the public trust of South Dakotans.

That includes South Dakota-specific concerns. The resolution calls attention to the thirteen-month delay by Sanford Health in publishing findings from its “SURVIVE” study, which documented that approximately 55% of participating healthcare workers possessed natural immunity to COVID-19 by early 2021. Those findings were not published until February 2022 — after Sanford had already required its own employees to be vaccinated, after the federal public-comment window on CMS healthcare worker vaccine mandates had closed, and after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on federal vaccination requirements. South Dakotans were denied access to their own state’s data at the very moments it could have shaped policy, protected civil liberties, and informed the courts.

“No South Dakotan should ever be required to undergo a medical intervention without full and honest disclosure of all relevant scientific information — including evidence of natural immunity. That is not a partisan position. It is informed consent. It is individual liberty. And it is a principle this party will not abandon, regardless of what Washington does or doesn’t do.”
— Jim Eschenbaum, Chairman, South Dakota Republican Party

The resolution also calls on Senator John Thune — South Dakota’s senior U.S. Senator, Senate Majority Leader, and a principal addressee of the 2025 AG coalition letter — to lend congressional cooperation to the accountability effort, and encourages NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya to support transparency and declassification of the pandemic-response record. The South Dakota Legislature’s Government Operations and Audit Committee is encouraged to exercise its full statutory subpoena authority should it pursue its own inquiry.

Today’s performance on Capitol Hill was a reminder that those who made the decisions that upended South Dakotans’ lives are not going to volunteer the truth. Seventeen state Attorneys General — including Marty Jackley — pledged in writing to go get it. The South Dakota Republican Party intends to hold them to that promise.