The home of a COVID-19 data scientist who formerly worked for the state of Florida was raided by state police on Monday.
Police executed a search warrant on Rebekah Jones, who was fired from the Florida Department of Health in the spring and is being investigated over whether she accessed an emergency messaging system at the agency to encourage her former colleagues to speak out about coronavirus case data that she claims were manipulated to facilitate reopening the state.
An investigator from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement claims that he was able to trace the message in question back to an IP address associated with Jones’s Comcast account using “investigative resources.” Jones, who helped build the state’s online coronavirus dashboard and has alleged that the state is trying to cover up the true footprint of the pandemic, says she didn’t send the message.
“They didn’t take the router in my house. They didn’t take a number of laptops in the house that belong to my son or my husband that could have easily done whatever it is that they think happened. They took my phone, and they took the computer that I use to run my companies,” Jones told CNN’s Chris Cuomo on Monday night.
Gretl Plessinger, a spokeswoman for the FDLE, confirmed that the raid took place and that computer equipment was taken.
“Ms. Jones refused to come to the door for 20 minutes and hung up on agents,” she said in a statement sent to multiple news outlets. “After several attempts and verbal notifications that law enforcement officers were there to serve a legal search warrant, Ms. Jones eventually came to the door and allowed agents to enter.”
In a video of the raid, which was released by Jones after it was captured by a camera in her home, several officers with guns drawn can be seen entering the house. One pointed a gun up the stairwell. Jones claims officers pointed guns at her and her children, but the video does not make that clear. Rick Swearingen, the department’s commissioner, said in a separate statement, “At no time were weapons pointed at anyone in the home.”
1/
There will be no update today.At 8:30 am this morning, state police came into my house and took all my hardware and tech.
They were serving a warrant on my computer after DOH filed a complaint.
They pointed a gun in my face. They pointed guns at my kids.. pic.twitter.com/DE2QfOmtPU
— Rebekah Jones (@GeoRebekah) December 7, 2020
Jones believes that the raid on her home was a “very thinly veiled attempt of the governor to intimidate scientists and get back at me.” She added in her exchange with Cuomo: “On my phone is every communication I’ve ever had with someone who works at the state, who has come to me in confidence and told me things that could get them fired or in trouble like this. And I just want to say to all those people right now — if he doesn’t know already, DeSantis will know soon enough that you’ve been talking to me, so be careful.”
Jones was fired from her position at the Florida DOH in May. She claims the decision was made as a backlash to her refusal to minimize the state’s coronavirus numbers. But the DOH said Jones “exhibited a repeated course of insubordination,” making “unilateral decisions to modify the Department’s COVID-19 dashboard without input or approval from the epidemiological team or her supervisors.”
