DeSantis objects to calling search of COVID-19 analyst’s home a raid
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said he was aware of an investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement but reacted angrily to calling the serving of a search warrant a raid.
Gov. Ron DeSantis on Friday angrily defended the state’s handling of the search warrant executed at the home of Rebekah Jones, the former state data analyst turned whistle-blower.
DeSantis acknowledged for the first time that he was aware of the investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which suspected Jones of sending an unauthorized message to her former colleagues on the state’s emergency-operations platform on Nov. 10.
But when asked by a reporter about the incident, he challenged the description of it as “a raid” and said of Jones: “Obviously, she’s got issues.”
“It’s not a raid. I mean, with all due respect, what you just said is editorializing,’’ DeSantis
told a reporter at a news conference in Tampa about mental-health issues.. As the reporter tried to clarify the question, he interrupted.
“Excuse me. Excuse me. No excuse me,’’ he said, his voice getting louder. “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. They did a search warrant. Why did they do a search warrant on the house? Because her IP address was linked to the felony. What were they supposed to do, just ignore it? Of course, not.”
The state suspects Jones, a former Department of Health employee who was fired in May after accusing DeSantis’ administration of manipulating COVID-19 data, of using old log-in credentials to gain “unauthorized access” to an employee-messaging platform to send a group text.
The Nov. 10 message urged employees to “be a hero” and “speak up” about COVID-19. She has not been charged with a crime, and she denies sending the message. If convicted, it would be a third-degree felony.
Jones, not the state, alerted the public to the state’s seizing of her computers on Monday in a Twitter post.
“They took my phone and the computer I use every day to post the case numbers in Florida, and school cases for the entire country. They took evidence of corruption at the state level. They claimed it was about a security breach. This was DeSantis. He sent the gestapo,’’ she wrote.
DeSantis, however, has used the term “raid” to describe the execution of search warrants in the past. In April 2018, the FBI confiscated documents at the home of Michael Cohen, the former attorney for President Donald Trump. DeSantis, who was then in Congress, appeared on the Fox Business Network’s “Lou Dobbs Tonight” show and said: “Look how quick they are to go raid Michael Cohen’s office when it suits them.”
WHISTLE-BLOWER COMPLAINT
Jones, who was fired in May, filed a whistle-blower complaint against the state and then developed her own COVID dashboard using the state’s publicly available data but presenting more metrics than the state was using on its dashboard.
DeSantis on Friday referred to the body-camera footage from the Tallahassee Police Department depicting 30 minutes of the search of Jones’ home that she said lasted three hours.
“They were very respectful. She was not cooperative,’’ the governor said. “It was not a raid. They were serving valid process in accordance with the
laws and Constitution of the United States and the state of Florida. They did it with integrity. They did it with honor, and to say it’s a raid is disinformation, and you guys need to look...”
As a reporter then tried to ask a question, he raised his voice: “Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me. You guys need to look at facts and stop trying to feed narratives. I understand why you do it, but it’s not supported by facts, and so you should be better than that.” He then ended the news conference.
FDLE Commissioner Rick Swearingen has also criticized the portrayal of the search by Jones and others and said he was “proud of the way these FDLE agents performed.”
“I can only hope those same individuals who criticized these public safety heroes will now apologize and condemn the actions of Ms. Jones,’’ he said in a statement released Thursday with the body-camera footage.
Earlier in the Friday news conference, DeSantis explained why the four officers arrived at Jones’ home.
“This individual became known because she alleged a conspiracy theory at the Department of Health, which is unfounded; never proven at all,’’ he said.
DeSantis did not mention that at the time of her firing the state accused her of insubordination. “She was fired because she wasn’t doing a good job,’’ he said. “There was none
of the stuff that she said was ever proven.”
CHECKING THE DATA
In May, Jones complained in an email to users of a state data portal that the state was manipulating data. She announced that she had been removed from overseeing the dashboard and hinted that she had been stripped of the responsibility as a result of raising concerns about the state’s commitment to transparency.
A subsequent data analysis by the Miami Herald found that by the time the state had begun reopening in May, it was no longer meeting federal reopening guidelines that required declines in new cases or positivity rates.
The Herald also found that, unlike the way the state has handled other infectious diseases, the COVID-19 records were incomplete, changed without explanation, dropped from the Department of Health website without warning, and often didn’t match the public narrative advanced by the governor.
DeSantis said that after Jones was fired, “You think that would be the end of it,” but he added, “Obviously, she’s got issues.”
He emphasized the sensitive nature of the website that Jones is accused of accessing.
“There was an intrusion of a very sensitive system. It’s an emergency-alert system,’’ he said. “If somebody gets a hold of that, they can do a lot of damage. I mean you could really frighten a lot of el
derly people, other vulnerable populations.”
However, a report from a technology news site, Ars Technica, on Wednesday said that readers of Reddit discovered that the Department of Health’s private messaging system that Jones allegedly accessed had published the email address and password and posted it in at least seven pdf files that were widely available on the internet to anyone who had the address.
The documents, with directions into Florida’s Emergency Support Function 8, or ESF-8, were still posted as of Wednesday evening when accessed by the Herald/Times. They have since been removed.
GOVERNOR WASN’T AWARE
The governor was apparently unaware of this practice. The Department of Health has not responded to Herald/Times questions about its password protocol and whether the release of this data is a violation of its own rules.
DeSantis said that after the alleged breach of the messaging system, “law enforcement looked at the intrusion; they identified the IP address. Then they did what any investigator would do,’’ he said. “They subpoenaed the internet provider.”
“The internet provider provided this residence as the IP address that did the intrusion,’’ he said. “So they got a search warrant, got the devices and, guess what? They’re probably going to be able to match those devices to the intrusion, at which point that’s clearly a felony offense.”
DeSantis added that “Floridians want government to protect them. I think that they want these sensitive systems to be protected. I don’t think they want there to be intrusion. And just because you’re a darling of some corners of the fever swamps, that does not exempt you from following the law.”
On Friday, Rick Johnson, who is representing Jones in a whistle-blower complaint against the state, criticized the state’s handling of the event and, after reviewing the body-camera footage, said FDLE agents acted inappropriately.
“The proper way to gain entry to a home is to present the search warrant before the search, not after,’’ Johnson said. “They presented it 2 or 3 hours after entry at gunpoint. Rebekah had a right to see what was included in the warrant before they searched. But she could not object with guns brandished.”
Johnson said the video shows officers verbally repeating Rebecca’s home address and phone number and, as a result, “she had to change her phone number because of the resulting threatening calls” and has since hired a private security service.
The video shows one agent putting his hands on Jones, which Johnson called “way more than is appropriate.”
“I could not believe my eyes when I read Swearingen’s press release,” he said. “The head of FDLE is actually saying in writing that his officers lost their composure and self-control because they had to wait on the doorstep longer than they wanted. If they are that fragile and easily rattled, they should not be on the street with guns and badges.”