Florida Inspector General Issues Damning Report on Fired DOH Staffer Rebekah Jones’ Claims of ‘Manipulated’ COVID Data

Florida Inspector General Issues Damning Report on Fired DOH Staffer Rebekah Jones’ Claims of ‘Manipulated’ COVID Data

The purported credibility of so-called Florida “whistleblower” and fired Dept. of Health IT staffer Rebekah Jones took yet another hit earlier this week after the state’s DOH inspector general released a damning report that found her various claims about how she was allegedly ordered in May 2020 to manipulate Florida’s COVID dashboard in the early days of the pandemic to make Gov. Ron DeSantis look better as he sought to re-open the state were “unsubstantiated” and “unfounded.”

Veteran Florida reporter Marc Caputo, who has been following this story from day one, filed this summary story:

The 27-page report from the Florida Department of Health’s Office of Inspector General said it found “insufficient evidence” or no evidence to support Rebekah Jones’ accusations that she was asked to falsify Covid positivity rates or misrepresent them on the state’s dashboard she helped design. The report also “exonerated” officials accused by Jones of wrongdoing because they removed a data section from the website to ensure that private individual health information was not released publicly.

The independent report paints a portrait of an employee who did not understand public health policy or the significance of epidemiological data, did not have high-level access to crucial information and leveled claims that made professional health officials “skeptical.”

The report did not examine one of Jones’ most explosives claims: that Florida intentionally hid deaths to make the pandemic seem less deadly.

That conspiracy theory, which Jones alternately promoted and recanted on Twitter before her account was suspended for violating the platform’s terms of service, has persisted on social media for more than a year, despite the lack of evidence. The Florida Democrat who ran the state’s emergency response at the time bemoaned how Jones spread “disinformation.” Independent epidemiologists say the claim has no basis.

Caputo also posted a lengthy Twitter thread in which he noted that the deeply troubled Jones, who was coddled by then-CNN host Chris Cuomo among others who treated her as a media darling, was even lying about the results of the report on her Instagram feed:

Note: the above tweet was reposted because I erred in describing just how much Jones is either lying or accidentally spreading misinformation.

The tweet below was deleted pic.twitter.com/D8nIvf2azu

— Marc Caputo (@MarcACaputo) May 26, 2022

He also pointed out how her penchant for routinely posting false information happened “so much that it seemed intentional at times.” Gee, ya think?

Also a reports: Jone had a long history of just getting information blatantly wrong, so much so that it seemed intentional at times https://t.co/fspedSTUny

— Marc Caputo (@MarcACaputo) May 26, 2022

CBS12’s Jay O’Brien, another Florida reporter who has closely tracked the story from the early days and who has done some in-depth reporting of his own on it, shared his thoughts as well:

1) It CANNOT be overstated the damage these now disproven allegations had on the trust between the State of Florida and the people.

In particular, what claims like this did to the morale of decent public servants who were battling daily with the pandemic.

— Jay O’Brien (@jayobtv) May 27, 2022

2) This report isn’t just a triumph of the truth – it’s a victory for the public health experts who were bullied and vilified on social media for standing up to Jones.

Many of them spoke to us for this piece. Some anonymously. 👇https://t.co/eAlxIVTwpd

— Jay O’Brien (@jayobtv) May 27, 2022

As even more proof of just how devastating this report was for Jones, the Miami Herald – which more than any other “news” outlet repeatedly propped up the known fraudulent claims of Rebekah Jones in their effort to “get DeSantis” – conveniently filed their story Friday just before midnight, over 36 hours after the original story broke:

Whether you like Florida or not, the timing of this story- 11:23PM on the Friday night of Memorial Day weekend, tells you everything you need to know about both the legitimacy of the original claim that was made & how big of a deal the Herald wanted the end result to be https://t.co/oRas7BR0mX

— Jim McIlvaine (@JimMcIlvaine) May 28, 2022

That said, the only unanswered question left at this point is:

Will the journalists who handed her the microphone because “we gotta get DeSantis” face any consequences?

— Jeff Bakken (@jeffbakken) May 27, 2022

That’s rhetorical, of course, because we know that isn’t going to happen.

Though thoroughly discredited, Jones will likely get more time in the media spotlight in advance of the August Florida primaries because she’s running on the Democrat side in hopes of being able to take on Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz in the fall elections. Don’t be surprised to see another in-kind contribution to her from the agenda-driven Miami Herald between now and then because bolstering people like Jones is just what they do.

— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —

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