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:
He also pointed out how her penchant for routinely posting false information happened “so much that it seemed intentional at times.” Gee, ya think?
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:
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:
That said, the only unanswered question left at this point is:
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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