DeSantis Allegedly Uses Police to Silence Covid Data Expert
Former state department head, responsible for tracking Covid-19 data within Florida, denies all allegations that she is responsible for hacking the Department of Health, as her home is raided.
Florida State Police have raided the home of former Department of Health data scientist, Rebekah Jones, claiming a substantial connection between Jones and an investigation involving a computer hack into the state’s internal notification system. According to the warrant served on Rebekah Jones on Monday morning in her Tallahassee home, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement also claims that Jones may be responsible for issuing an unauthorized message to state employees.
The Florida Health Department system was purportedly hacked on Nov. 10, and a message was sent out urging state employees to come forward with information about Florida’s mis-handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. But, there appear to be several inconsistencies with the raid based on this latest claim about Jones hacking in, and urging DOH staff to “speak up before another 17,000 people are dead.”
While law enforcement invaded the home of Rebekah Jones yesterday, the event was recorded by Jones, who watched as police officers pointed guns at both her and her children. In the recording, seen in the tweet below, officers enter the home with their guns drawn, and once Jones notifies them that her children are in the home, they continue to point their guns in a way that seems unnecessary and overtly hostile. (watch below)
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement issued a statement after the raid on Monday, stating: “At no time were weapons pointed at anyone in the home.” But the video taken by Jones appears to directly contradict this statement. Officials claim that you can’t actually see a gun pointed at a child in the video, but you can see officers pointing guns up at the stairs after Jones has told them her husband and children are in the home and at one point, Jones exclaims, “Do not point that gun at my children — he just pointed a gun at my children!”
Jones revealed what had transpired on social media, along with the video of the incident saying, “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…”
Jones went on to explain, “They took my phone and the computer I use every day to post the case numbers in Florida, and school cases for the entire country. They took evidence of corruption at the state level. They claimed it was about a security breach. This was DeSantis. He sent the gestapo.”
Jones also recounted the events in an interview on CNN later last night (see above) and explained, “I actually think that they’re not after me-they didn’t take the router in my house, they didn’t take a number of laptops in the house.” Jones says that this makes no sense in regard to proving that she was responsible for the hack via some device in her home.
Jones says she has consulted with lawyers, and given what the authorities claimed in the warrant and what was actually seized from her home, much of the raid does not add up. “They took my phone and they took the computer that I use to run my companies,” said Jones. “Every communication that I’ve ever had, with someone who works at the state, who has come to me in confidence [and] told me things that could get them fired [was taken],” according to Jones. She also warned any state employee that had been feeding her information, that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis would soon be coming for them as well.
Rebekah Jones, who was previously the head of the Florida Department of Health’s Geographic Information Services division, which maps and tracks data, was fired in May. Jones says she was fired for refusing to comply with a demand from superior officials within the agency to alter coronavirus data in an effort to fit the narrative Governor DeSantis was touting for the media in order to justify re-opening business within the state.
Internal emails within the Florida Department of Health seem to back up this explanation and show that Jones resisted following her bosses instructions, which were to remove the raw Covid data from the state website. Doing so would have made it impossible for users to download any data for analysis or proof.
Jones filed a whistleblower complaint against the Florida Department of Health in July following her termination. In that complaint, she claims she was wrongfully removed from her job for refusing to falsify data. DeSantis had lifted most of the coronavirus-related restrictions that had been imposed earlier and had purposely hindered the ability of local governments to enforce mask mandates. He also claimed that the data from the health department justified his actions. Rebekah Jones has long since argued the real and accurate data does just the opposite.
It appears that Jones was not the only one silenced by the DeSantis administration this summer. Florida’s top health official, Surgeon General Scott Rivkees, was sidelined, for the most part, on his ability to continue public messaging and advocacy on coronavirus safety, and ceased to appear in any of DeSantis’ press conferences.
The Department of Health’s Twitter account also stopped messaging on the pandemic after it had been a source of regular reminders and cautious measures, such as wearing a mask, washing your hands, social distancing and protecting the elderly and vulnerable.
The Florida Sun-Sentinal published an article on Dec. 3, based on interviews with more than 50 people, including scientists, doctors, political leaders, employees of the state health department, and other state officials, as well as more than 4,000 pages of documents. The report backs up the claims by Jones and others: DeSantis attempted to suppress the data, and tried to keep people working for him from releasing the true figures, in order to present numbers that fit within his statements.
In September, the Florida Department of Health’s county-level spokespeople were ordered to stop making any public statements about COVID-19 until after the Nov. 3 election. State officials purposely withheld information about infections in schools, prisons, hospitals and nursing homes, and only gave in to requests for information under pressure or legal action, which demanded it.
The governor’s spokesperson used Twitter to purposely spread false information about the virus, as DeSantis and his team refused to give any details about the first cases in Florida and how the virus might be spreading. Moreover, DeSantis pushed aside scientists, that included Rebekah Jones, as well as doctors who advocated for utilizing conventional approaches to fighting the pandemic. He then installed quack theorists, who would be considered fringe by the best of standards.
Rebekah Jones now insists that this latest police raid of her home was done in order to get the names of the people at the Florida Department of Health (DOH) who were feeding her information. Jones also adamantly denies any involvement with the supposed hacking at DOH. “I haven’t had access to any systems at DOH for over six months — I’m not a hacker.” says Jones. “As the governor pointed out many months ago, I’m not that tech savvy and have no interest in reaching out to DOH,” says Jones.
Jones also claims that she would not hack the DOH system to tell people to take action now, because she has “been publicly telling people to come forward for months.” She also says that statements by law enforcement that say her IP address is proof that she initiated the hacking are false and unsubstantiated. “That IP address was apparently provided by the Department of Health Inspector General and didn’t actually come from the investigation, it came straight from DOH,” Jones states.
Given the recent reporting from the Sun-Sentinel, that confirms reports from many credible scientists and doctors about DeSantis’ attempts to suppress the real data from being exposed, this explanation from Rebekah Jones seems quite plausible. Jones also explains that she had never seen the text purportedly sent by the hacker until the raid, and that the language that is used does not even correspond with her messaging or the way she speaks.
Another indication that Jones believes none of these charges can be substantiated is revealed by one of her tweets from yesterday: “If De[S]antis thought pointing a gun in my face was a good way to get me to shut up, he's about to learn just how wrong he was. I'll have a new computer tomorrow. And then I'm going to get back to work.”
The fact that DeSantis has not been able to legally take down the website, where Jones publishes her constantly updated counts concerning the pandemic, also shows that there is not likely enough credible evidence to shut Jones down in the courts. You can access the work of Rebekah Jones and review her data collection for yourself at the COVID Action website, which is also still up and running.
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Amee Vanderpool writes the SHERO Newsletter and is an attorney, published author, contributor to newspapers and magazines and analyst for BBC radio. She can be reached at avanderpool@gmail.com or follow her on Twitter @girlsreallyrule.
I really do believe that the GOP are just evil. I have no words, for what is taking place in the US. It is frightening. What's next? Who's next? We are "that" country!
DeSantis is (pardon my language) an even bigger assclown than his mentor who is currently squatting in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and that's saying something. The incredible irony to me is that for the most part, it is seniors (who voted from Trump in large numbers) and minority populations in the cities (especially Hispanics) who are taking the brunt of this, and they are a huge part of DeSantis' and Trump's base.