Want to see a great video of Ron DeSantis going absolutely scorched earth on a reporter? Then watch this epic video:
As background, the tense moment came when Governor Ron DeSantis and a reporter sparred over a question regarding Rebekah Jones. Jones was a former state health employee who was under criminal investigation at the time. WPTV, reporting on what was going on with Jones at the time the question was asked, said:
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement executed a search warrant at Jones’ Tallahassee home on Monday.
Jones, who was fired for unauthorized public comments about the state’s COVID-19 dashboard in May, has been under investigation since early November when someone illegally accessed Florida’s emergency alert health system.
[…]The FDLE said someone accessed the system last month, sending an unauthorized message to more than 1,700 state employees, urging them to speak out.
“It’s time to speak up before another 17,000 people are dead,” the Nov. 10 message read. “You know this is wrong. You don’t have to be a part of this. Be a hero. Speak out before it’s too late.”
So, as you can hear in the above video, the reporter pressed DeSantis on Jones and her situation, first asking “Were you aware that the Rebekah Jones raid was about to happen?”
DeSantis wasn’t taking any prisoners that day and responded with a vicious, angry response, saying “It’s not a raid! I’m not gonna let you get away with it. These people did their jobs. They’ve been smeared as the Gestapo for doing their jobs.”
DeSantis, continuing, noted that the IP address used to illegally access the emergency alert system was linked to Jones’ home and that the police couldn’t just ignore her potentially illegal action, saying:
“What were they supposed to do? Just ignore it? Of course not. It was not a raid. They were serving valid process in accordance with the laws and the Constitution of the United States and the state of Florida. They did it with integrity. They did it with honor. And to say it was a raid is disinformation.”
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Jones, for her part, insisted that she was innocent, saying “I don’t know the first thing about computers. If something is wrong with your computer, I’m liable to make it worse. Being a statistician doesn’t mean you know how to program computers. It means you know how to analyze information.”
DeSantis, however, was the one vindicated, as Jones recently accepted a plea deal with prosecutors in order to avoid a trial. South Santa Rosa News, reporting on that, noted that:
Rebekah Jones, a former Florida Department of Health data scientist, on December 7 accepted a plea deal with prosecutors, meaning she will avoid a January 23 trial in Leon County on a felony count of offenses against users of (computers).
As a condition of the deferred prosecution agreement, Jones agreed to the following special conditions:
- Pay $20,000 in investigative fees to Florida Department of Law Enforcement at a rate of $200 per month until paid in full;
- Perform 150 hours of community services at a minimum rate of 13 hours per month;
- See a licensed mental health professional for at least one hour per month
- Admits guilt to the offense(s) charged
- Pay $100 fee to State Attorney’s Office upon filing of agreement
Featured image credit: screenshot from embedded Rumble video