DeSantis vindicated of COVID cover-up after media darling, ‘whistleblower’ ends up in complete disgrace
What a surprise: Rebekah Jones, once hailed as a “whistleblower” for claiming Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis had fudged the state’s COVID-19 numbers, has been revealed as a complete fraud.
A report released last week by the Florida Department of Health Office of Inspector General exonerated DeSantis on the allegations and found nothing to back up Jones’ allegations that she’d been pressured to alter COVID-19 case and death counts. In fact, the people the inspector general’s office talked to couldn’t even make sense out of the allegations, considering Jones didn’t have access to the raw coronavirus data.
(In spite of this, the mainstream media is hardly handling the report with the same breathlessness they handled the accusations against DeSantis — and for obvious reasons. At a time when trust in the mainstream media is at a low, we here at The Western Journal bring you news and analysis you won’t hear in the mainstream press. If you like and support our work, please consider subscribing.)
According to an editorial published Friday by The Wall Street Journal, the inspector general found no evidence to support Jones’ claims.
“Based upon an analysis of the available evidence, there is insufficient evidence to clearly support a violation of a law, rule, or policy, as described by the complainant,” the report stated.
The governor’s office argued that Jones was fired from her job for “insubordination” and “unilateral decisions to modify the Department’s COVID-19 dashboard without input or approval from the epidemiological team or her supervisors.”
Jones’ original allegations were that she had been ordered to tidy up COVID numbers to support the state’s reopening in the spring of 2020. In addition, she claimed the governor had retaliated against her by having the Florida Department of Law Enforcement execute a search warrant against her in December 2020, arguing DeSantis had “sent the Gestapo” to keep her quiet.
Police say the raid involved a data breach that was traced back to Jones’ home IP address. She’s been hit with a felony charge for downloading confidential health department data. She has pleaded innocent.
According to the Journal, the inspector general’s office talked to over a dozen individuals who worked with Jones as part of its investigation, including her superiors — and not a single one supported her allegations of fudged data.
While she told some of her co-workers that she was told to alter COVID data in the system, the report said they didn’t buy her allegations. That wasn’t just because of her inherent unreliability but because of the fact she didn’t have access to the pertinent data. Instead, she was in charge of handling the state’s online dashboard, not the raw data.
“If the complainant or other DOH staff were to have falsified COVID-19 data on the dashboard, the dashboard would then not have matched the data in the corresponding final daily report,” the report said.
“Such a discrepancy would have been detectable by Bureau of Epidemiology staff conducting data quality assurance, as well as other parties, both within and outside the DOH, including but not limited to county health departments, local governments, researchers, the press/media, and the general public.”
Instead, the report stated the inspector general’s office “found no evidence that the DOH misrepresented or otherwise misled the public regarding how positivity rates were calculated,” according to the report.
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