{"id":567857,"date":"2021-06-18T13:07:17","date_gmt":"2021-06-18T17:07:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=567857"},"modified":"2021-06-18T13:07:18","modified_gmt":"2021-06-18T17:07:18","slug":"woman-who-tried-to-wreck-desantis-accused-researcher-who-challenged-her-of-sexual-harassment-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/woman-who-tried-to-wreck-desantis-accused-researcher-who-challenged-her-of-sexual-harassment-report\/","title":{"rendered":"Woman Who Tried To Wreck DeSantis Accused Researcher Who Challenged Her Of Sexual Harassment: Report"},"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\">30<\/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%2Fwoman-who-tried-to-wreck-desantis-accused-researcher-who-challenged-her-of-sexual-harassment-report%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=567857&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--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/GettyImages-1164628727.jpg?w=1200&#038;h=800&#038;ixlib=react-9.0.3\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\"  style=\"display:none\"><\/div>\n<p>A <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/news\/a-florida-graduate-student-wanted-to-correct-the-record-on-covid-deaths-rebekah-jones-tried-to-ruin-his-career-over-it\/\">blistering report<\/a> in National Review delineates how Rebekah Jones \u2014\u00a0the former COVID dashboard manager for the Florida state health department who <a href=\"https:\/\/dailywire.com\/news\/media-wanted-to-believe-florida-was-fudging-covid-19-data-but-the-story-is-a-fraud\/\">falsely\u00a0claimed<\/a> that higher-ups in the DeSantis administration instructed her to input different COVID data than what they received \u2014 allegedly turned to spurious claims of sexual harassment to target a Ph.D. candidate at the Florida Atlantic University College of Business who challenged the way that news media was reporting COVID-death numbers.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\" readability=\"7.8048780487805\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Rebekah Jones is a monster, and the media lionized her because she plays for the right team. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/EjCDTao8e6\">https:\/\/t.co\/EjCDTao8e6<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/redsteeze\/status\/1405843626282786822?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">June 18, 2021<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Jon Taylor, 37, a Ph.D. candidate at the Florida Atlantic University (FAU) College of Business, noted publicly that the media was \u201cconflating the actual number of Floridians who had died of COVID on a given day with the number of COVID deaths that had been entered into the system on that day \u2014 a total that included deaths that had occurred days and sometimes weeks before the entry date,\u201d as Jack Crowe wrote in National Review.<\/p>\n<p>Taylor joined his academic adviser to <a href=\"https:\/\/business.fau.edu\/covidtracker\/\">create their own COVID tracker<\/a>, which wound up showing that media reports on Florida COVID deaths were exaggerated. He issued a blog post in early August 2020 explaining how the way the state presented COVID numbers elicited an overstatement of the true data.<\/p>\n<p>That triggered Jones to call Taylor a \u201cquack\u201d and a \u201cfraud\u201d on Twitter. After a quiet period, in October Taylor started to appear on local news shows and podcasts, and one of his tracker tweets went viral. Jones then accused Taylor and his adviser of sexual harassment, while tagging FAU, the president of FAU,\u00a0and university police.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJones deleted the tweets, but Taylor preserved them as screenshots on the advice of a prominent academic who had previously been subjected to a characteristic Jones smear campaign,\u201d Crowe reports. \u201cJones makes a habit of deleting past tweets before arguing that she had never sent them in the first place, the academic told Taylor. Reached for comment, Jones also denied defaming Taylor and his adviser.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Jones also emailed the dean of the FAU College of Business accusing Taylor and his adviser of sexual harassment. \u201cThe dean of the business school, Daniel Gropper, then escalated the complaint to the vice president of the university and the chief of the FAU police department, who asked Jones to substantiate her claims. Jones never did,\u201d Crowe reported.<\/p>\n<p>In one email, Jones accused Taylor of making \u201cjokes that he would put his penis in my mouth to shut me up.\u201d\u00a0Taylor told Crowe, \u201cThat crossed the line to me. I would never say that to somebody. . . . I know the consequence of saying that to somebody. And it\u2019s not just the consequence. I\u2019m just a good person. I would never do that anyway. I don\u2019t talk like that; it\u2019s ridiculous.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>With no evidence to support her accusations, Jones then claimed Taylor or his adviser issued the threats through burner accounts or urged their followers to threaten Jones for them.<\/p>\n<p>Taylor denied the lurid claims, adding that he was frightened the student board that would consider the charges would take Jones at her word. He stated, \u201cThey don\u2019t have to have proof. There\u2019s no burden of proof; the mere suspicion that it could be true is enough to expel me from the university. If I get expelled, I\u2019m never finishing my doctorate. That\u2019s the true cost of what\u2019s going on here. And that\u2019s exactly what she tried to do.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, still not producing any hard evidence, Jones urged her followers to contact the university about Taylor, prompting numerous followers to do just that.<\/p>\n<p>Crowe related other cases in which Jones had attempted to harass people who questioned her claims about COVID numbers, noting that the academics Jones targeted wanted to remain anonymous out of fear of retribution.<\/p>\n<p>But Peter Wood, who graduated from the Florida State University geography doctoral program in 2016, was not as reticent; he stated, \u201cI know people who refuse to even be anonymously involved in conversations about her because they\u2019re afraid she\u2019ll harass them. I\u2019m in a decent position. I\u2019m not afraid of her; I don\u2019t have much to lose.\u201d He pointed out Jones had falsely represented herself as a Florida State geography Ph.D. on Twitter and that she had been expelled from the FSU program for having sex with an undergraduate and lying about her criminal record.<\/p>\n<p>Crowe wrote, \u201cFar from being ostracized for her role in making frank discussion of an immensely important topic near impossible, Jones has profited immensely. She\u2019s raised more than $600,000 on the crowdfunding website GoFundMe; her conspiracy theories about Florida\u2019s COVID cover-up have been endorsed by Florida congressman Charlie Crist, Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, and the president of one of the nation\u2019s largest teachers\u2019 unions; and she\u2019s now<a href=\"https:\/\/dailywire.com\/news\/rebekah-jones-florida-whistleblower-whose-story-has-been-seriously-questioned-plans-to-run-for-congress\/\"> teasing a run for Congress<\/a> herself.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In January, Jones was arrested for allegedly getting unauthorized access into the state\u2019s emergency messaging system. If she\u2019s convicted, the felony charge carries a sentence of up to 5 years in prison.<\/p>\n<p><em>The Daily Wire is one of America\u2019s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/subscribe\"><em>member<\/em><\/a><em>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A blistering report in National Review delineates how Rebekah Jones \u2014\u00a0the former COVID dashboard manager for the Florida state health department who falsely\u00a0claimed that higher-ups in the DeSantis administration instructed &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2280688,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/GettyImages-1164628727.jpg?w=1200&h=800&ixlib=react-9.0.3","fifu_image_alt":"Woman Who Tried To Wreck DeSantis Accused Researcher Who Challenged Her Of Sexual Harassment: Report","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-567857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/GettyImages-1164628727.jpg?w=1200&h=800&ixlib=react-9.0.3","fifu_image_alt":"Woman Who Tried To Wreck DeSantis Accused Researcher Who Challenged Her Of Sexual Harassment: Report","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567857","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=567857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2280688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=567857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=567857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=567857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}