Rebekah Jones, a geospatial scientist formerly with the state Department of Health, reportedly told several media outlets she was asked to remove data showing that COVID-19 patients first reported symptoms earlier than state officials originally announced. She claimed that when she refused to “manually change data to drum up support for the plan to reopen,” she was given the choice to resign or be fired.
Gov. Ron DeSantis said on 12/8 he did not know Jones, but he insisted her termination was over her “insubordination” — not over any refusal to alter state data.
During a press conference with Vice President Mike Pence, DeSantis went further, disputing nearly every claim Jones made in recent interviews.
“One, she is not a data scientist. She is somebody that’s got a degree in journalism, communication and geography. She is not involved in collating any data, she does not have the expertise to do that, she is not an epidemiologist, she is not the chief architect of our web portal. That is another false statement,” the governor said. “She was putting data on the portal, which the scientists didn’t believe was valid data. So, she didn’t listen to people who were her superiors, she had many people above her in the chain of command. And so then she was dismissed because of that.”
Then, DeSantis said Jones is under “active criminal charges” in Florida, which includes cyber-stalking and cyber-sexual harassment.
“I have a zero-tolerance policy for sexual harassment,” the governor said, adding that he was asking the Department of Health to explain how she had remained employed despite the charges.
Records in the Leon County Clerk of Court website show Rebekah Jones was involved in cases matching what the governor said. In October 2017 and in June 2019, a temporary injunction for stalking was filed against her in Leon County. Those cases are closed.
A police report obtained by WEAR-TV showed a man told police officers Jones posted a website that included naked pictures of him and shared it with his employer and relatives.1
In July 2019, a stalking case was filed by the state of Florida against Jones. The case remains open.
FOX 13 asked the govenror’s office what questionable data Jones was putting online and his spokesperson offered this reply:
“Rebeka [sic] Jones acted as if she had ownership of the Department of Health Dashboard website and disregarded the direction given to her by subject matter experts such as the Senior Epidemiologists, Senior Data Analysts and supervisors. She was resistant to publishing data on the website she disagreed with going against the judgement of the epidemiologists, senior data analysts and supervisors. Event Date is a field that can be queried on the dashboard that marks the beginning of the epidemiological investigation which is based on self-reporting of information that is not medically certified. The science and public health experts believe the best information is the actual clinical diagnosis of the disease verified by COVID-19 diagnostic testing,” Helen Aguirre Ferre wrote.
Meanwhile, some Democratic senators began demanding an investigation into Jones’ claims about data manipulation after her claims got national attention Tuesday.
“We are making public policy decisions based on that information,” state Sen. Lori Berman of Boynton Beach said. “If it is being falsified, we need to know that.”
“Our data is available. Our data is transparent. Any insinuation otherwise is just typical partisan narrative,” DeSantis countered Wednesday, pointing to Florida’s comparatively low mortality rate.
“We’ve succeeded and I think that people just don’t want to recognize it because it challenges their narrative, it challenges their assumption. So they gotta try and find a boogeyman,” he added. “Maybe it’s that there are black helicopters circling the Department of Health. If you believe that, I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you.”
“Rebekah Jones exhibited a repeated course of insubordination during her time with the department, including her unilateral decisions to modify the department’s COVID-19 dashboard without input or approval from the epidemiological team or her supervisors,” Ferre said. “The blatant disrespect for the professionals who were working around the clock to provide the important information for the COVID-19 website was harmful to the team.”
Jones has raised over $100,000 on gofundme with her fake victim sob story.
Jones wrote on the social media platform that state police entered her home at 8:30 a.m. Monday, “pointed a gun in my face,” “pointed guns at my kids,” and took all of her hardware and technology.
1/
There will be no update today.At 8:30 am this morning, state police came into my house and took all my hardware and tech.
They were serving a warrant on my computer after DOH filed a complaint.
They pointed a gun in my face. They pointed guns at my kids.. pic.twitter.com/DE2QfOmtPU
— Rebekah Jones (@GeoRebekah) December 7, 2020
A spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Gretl Plessinger, confirmed that a search warrant was carried out at Jones’s home, and that computer equipment was seized during the encounter.
Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) Commissioner Rick Swearingen said in a separate statement that an investigation by the agency began in November following a complaint by the health department that an individual “illegally hacked into their emergency alert system.”
“As part of our investigation, FDLE agents served a search warrant this morning at the Centerville Court residence where Ms. Jones lives after determining the home was the location that the unauthorized message was sent from,” the statement said. “Agents knocked and called Ms. Jones both announcing the search warrant and encouraging her to cooperate. Ms. Jones refused to come to the door for 20 minutes and hung-up on agents.”
The FDLE statement says that no weapons were pointed at anyone in the home during the incident.
“After several attempts, Ms. Jones allowed agents inside. Agents entered the home in accordance with normal protocols and seized several devices that will be forensically analyzed. At no time were weapons pointed at anyone in the home. Any evidence will be referred to the state attorney for prosecution as appropriate,” Swearingen added.
Jones claimed the state’s deputy director of health, Dr. Shamarial Roberson ordered her to change the data. Jones’ former colleagues completely dismantled her claims and just like that, another hoax that was amplified by CNN falls apart.
CREDIBILITY QUESTIONED. Former colleagues of fired dashboard designer Rebekah Jones and public health experts tell CBS12 News her claims that she was directed to delete COVID cases and deaths from the state’s data are unsupported by the evidence.
Read: https://t.co/a2YzvkEpqs pic.twitter.com/wNrvioKKFo— WPEC CBS12 News (@CBS12) May 26, 2021
An arrest warrant was issued in January 2020 for Jones on one criminal charge in which she was given the chance to turn herself in, which she planned to do in a twitter message where she again pled vctimization: “Bogus charges designed to silence and now jail me for being a scientist critical of the government,” she tweeted. “That’s the textbook definition of #censorship.”
