{"id":1495845,"date":"2022-05-28T17:31:20","date_gmt":"2022-05-28T21:31:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1495845"},"modified":"2022-05-28T17:59:24","modified_gmt":"2022-05-28T21:59:24","slug":"florida-inspector-general-report-finds-insufficient-evidence-of-rebekah-jones-claims-against-desantis-administration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/florida-inspector-general-report-finds-insufficient-evidence-of-rebekah-jones-claims-against-desantis-administration\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida Inspector General Report Finds \u2018Insufficient Evidence\u2019 Of Rebekah Jones\u2019 Claims Against DeSantis Administration"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">28<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fflorida-inspector-general-report-finds-insufficient-evidence-of-rebekah-jones-claims-against-desantis-administration%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1495845&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>The Florida woman who claimed she was asked to falsify COVID-19 data made \u201cunsubstantiated\u201d and \u201cunfounded\u201d claims about why she was fired, the Florida Department of Health\u2019s Office of Inspector General found.<\/p>\n<p>Rebekah Jones claimed she was fired after she refused to falsify or manipulate COVID-19 data for the state of Florida. Her accusations were picked up by media outlets looking to demonize Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who bucked Blue State COVID lockdown trends during the pandemic.<\/p>\n<p>The Inspector General <a href=\"https:\/\/www.documentcloud.org\/documents\/22039765-oig-report?responsive=1&#038;title=1\">report<\/a> makes clear that there is no evidence to support Jones\u2019 claims and exonerates the officials she accused of wrongdoing.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe 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 \u2018skeptical,\u2019\u201d NBC News <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/politics\/politics-news\/florida-ig-report-insufficient-evidence-desantis-critics-claims-covid-rcna30647\">reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The Inspector General report did not, however, investigate Jones\u2019 claim that Florida intentionally reported fewer deaths, a claim NBC called a \u201cconspiracy theory.\u201d The Daily Wire previously <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/news\/rebekah-jones-florida-whistleblower-claims-she-never-said-she-was-asked-to-delete-covid-deaths-she-claimed-that-specifically\">reported<\/a> that Jones on December 24, 2020, published a now-deleted tweet that read: \u201cThe woman who told me to delete cases and deaths is now blaming DOCTORS for the death backlog. She\u2019s the most corrupt, lying, incompetent and ignorant person that could be [sic] ever be put in charge.\u201d Her tweet came in response to a Sun Sentinel article claiming Florida had a delayed death reporting process.<\/p>\n<p>But in May 2021, Jones claimed she never made such an accusation, tweeting, \u201cDeleting deaths was never something I was asked to do. I\u2019ve never claimed it was,\u201d after Fox News host Tucker Carlson featured her fraudulent claims on this nightly program.<\/p>\n<p>Media outlets hailed Jones as a \u201cwhistleblower\u201d for her claims and because she was granted such status by the same Inspector General now saying there is no substantiation to her wrongful termination claims.<\/p>\n<p>Jones\u2019 attorney, Rick Johnson, said his client would take the matter to court, insisting Jones \u201cwas fired for refusing to manipulate Covid data.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Jones\u2019 claim to have been asked to manipulate data was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/news\/media-wanted-to-believe-florida-was-fudging-covid-19-data-but-the-story-is-a-fraud\">debunked<\/a> by National Review\u2019s Charles C.W. Cooke, who <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/2021\/05\/rebekah-jones-the-covid-whistleblower-who-wasnt\/\">reported<\/a> that Jones never handled raw data and was given only a copy of the data she was supposed to input in the system.\u00a0Jones\u2019 story also changed dramatically the more she told it, from her initial claims that she was fired for merely questioning the data to eventually claiming her superiors directed her to \u201cdelete cases and deaths\u201d to make Florida look better.<\/p>\n<p>Her claim that her superior told her to \u201cgo into the raw data and manually alter figures,\u201d wasn\u2019t possible because she never had access to that raw data.<\/p>\n<p>In August 2021, Jones was called out for another false claim, one involving DeSanti\u2019s press secretary Christina Pushaw. Jones <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/news\/rebekah-jones-who-falsely-claimed-florida-altered-covid-death-totals-has-falsely-claimed-gov-desantis-press-secretary-faced-criminal-charges\">claimed<\/a> Pushaw faced criminal charges after she allegedly violated a restraining order Jones took out against her. Pushaw never knew about the restraining order, and Jones claimed the order had been violated before it had even been reviewed by the courts. The request for the restraining order was dismissed, and so was the follow-up claim. Nevertheless, Jones claimed the state attorney was making a \u201cdeal\u201d with Pushaw for \u201cdeferred prosecution,\u201d a claim the state attorney denied.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Florida woman who claimed she was asked to falsify COVID-19 data made \u201cunsubstantiated\u201d and \u201cunfounded\u201d claims about why she was fired, the Florida Department of Health\u2019s Office of Inspector General found. Rebekah Jones claimed she was fired after she refused to falsify or manipulate COVID-19 data for the state of Florida. Her accusations were &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":126,"featured_media":1495960,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1495845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1495845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/126"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1495845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1495845\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1495960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1495845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1495845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1495845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}