Disgraced former Florida Dept. of Health IT staffer Rebekah Jones is in the news again, and as usual, she’s (falsely) portraying herself and her family as victims of the supposedly tyrannical rule of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Jones, as Legal Insurrection readers will recall, went from famous to infamous in a relatively short period of time in the spring and summer of 2020 after CNN’s Chris Cuomo and Big Media outlets in Florida took her allegations that she was fired by DeSantis for what she says was refusing to falsify COVID dashboard data at face value.
Jones was exposed as less than honest in short order, but unfortunately, that didn’t keep the Useful Idiots in the press from showering her with accolades.
Case in point: On the morning of December 7th, 2020, Jones was treated to a visit from the Florida Dept. of Law Enforcement (FDLE) after a complaint had been filed by the Dept. of Health claiming someone hacked into their emergency messaging system, which turned out to be Jones. Jones lied about it on Twitter, saying they were there on DeSantis’ orders.
The latest on the long list of manipulation attempts by Jones came on Wednesday when Jones jumped on the Twitter machine to claim that her son had been “taken on the gov’s orders” and that she’d “had to send my husband and daughter out of state for their safety”:
She later tweeted that DeSantis and law enforcement officers had “kidnapped” her son:
Jones says they were there in retaliation over the lawsuit she recently filed against the Florida Dept. of Health seeking her job back along with back wages.
The real story, of course, is not the dramatic one Jones painted. First and foremost, the below video shows Jones, following a felony warrant being issued for her son’s arrest, turning him in on Wednesday to the Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office, where he was later arrested on charges that he allegedly threatened to shoot up a school he once attended. Beside them is her husband, the one she supposedly had to send away along with her daughter “for their safety”:
Here are two more clips of Jones, which show her son in handcuffs:
Here were the threats he allegedly made, according to reporting from the Pensacola News Journal:
As I was writing this, Jones was busy on Twitter spinning a yarn and trying to discredit her critics. Keep in mind that her son is now home, according to her. But instead of spending every minute with him, she’s devoting her time to trying to garner social media sympathy and raise money (yes, she has posted a link to a fundraising page, which I won’t directly link to).
Vice.com, which is not exactly DeSantis-friendly territory, wrote a detailed piece debunking a lot of what Jones has claimed so far. Jason Koebler, one of the writers of the Vice story, also tweeted out a lengthy Twitter thread dissecting and debunking Jones’ claims:
Contrast how Vice handled the story to how the Jones apologists at the Miami Herald initially “reported” the news:
Jones should do the same, but she won’t because she feeds off of manipulating others and playing the victim card. Twitter is likely one of the few places left where she can find the occasional sympathetic supporter, but even in those instances, it is usually someone who—like Jones—has a vested interest in trying to damage DeSantis.
In any event, we’ll see how this story, and Jones’ lawsuit, plays out in the coming weeks and months, so stay tuned.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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