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Media story Fla ‘scientist’ fired for refusing to fudge covid data goes up in smoke. REAL story far more outrageous.

May 21, 2020 | | Print Article

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Another day, another debunked left-wing narrative …

Earlier this week the left broke into an uproar after an obscure woman from Florida claimed to local media that she’d been terminated from the Florida Department of Health for refusing to fudge the state’s coronavirus numbers.

Her dubious claim was all that was needed for leftists to indict Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on the spot for corruption, malfeasance, deceit, you name it — and to conversely herald so-called “whistleblower” Rebekah Jones as a “hero.

Look:

Notice how the latter tweet by left-wing media contributor Marie Myung-Ok Lee smeared DeSantis as “pro-Coronavirus” over his willingness to ease his state’s economically devastating lockdown policies. Biased much?

But as is almost always the case, the narrative has turned out to have been patently false. According to a statement released by DeSantis’ office, Jones wasn’t terminated for fudging the numbers but rather for insubordination.

“Rebekah Jones exhibited a repeated course of insubordination during her time with the Department, including her unilateral decisions to modify the Department’s COVID-19 dashboard without input or approval from the epidemiological team or her supervisors,” the statement published Wednesday reads.

“The blatant disrespect for the professionals who were working around the clock to provide the important information for the COVID-19 website was harmful to the team.”

She reportedly has a history of insubordination.

A June 15, 2016 “crime brief” from Louisiana State University’s student paper, The Daily Reveille, mentions how Jones was “booked on one count of battery on a police officer, one count of remaining after forbidden and two counts of resisting arrest” at the time.

But there’s more.

The media portrayed Jones as some sort of high-level “scientist” who’d served as the “architect” behind Florida’s COVID-19 dashboard. This too is false.

“Rebekah Jones’ duties were to display data obtained by the Department’s epidemiological staff,” the statement from the governor’s office continued.

“The team that created the graphics on the dashboard, which was made up by multiple people, received data that was provided by subject matter experts, including Senior Epidemiologists, Surveillance Epidemiologists, and a Senior Database Analyst.”

It turns out that the media’s beloved “scientist” doesn’t even boast a science degree but rather one in geography, according to records maintained by Florida State University:

(Source: FSU)

“She’s not a data scientist. She’s somebody that’s got a degree in journalism, communication & geography. She’s not involved in collating any data,” DeSantis revealed during a briefing with reporters Wednesday.

“She does not have the expertise to do that. She is not an epidemiologist. She is not the chief architect of our web portal. That is another false statement. She was putting data on the portal which the scientists didn’t believe was valid data. So she didn’t listen to the people who were her superiors.”

Listen:

But there’s still more.

Jones boasts a criminal record, which raises legitimate questions about why she was allowed to obtain a position within the state’s health department.

“Come to find out she’s also under active criminal charges in the state of Florida. She’s being charged with cyber-stalking and cyber sexual harassment,” the governor continued Wednesday.

“So I’ve asked the Department of Health to explain to me how someone would be allowed to be charged with that and continue on, because this was many months ago. I have zero-tolerance policy for sexual harassment.”

Fact-check: TRUE.

“A police report from Tallahassee Police shows a man claimed to be a victim of revenge porn by Rebekah Jones in June 2019. The man told police he had an injunction against Jones for a year until it recently expired,” local station WPEC reported.

“He said Jones posted a website, which included naked pictures of him, and shared it with his place of employment and family members. Jones plead not guilty to misdemeanor stalking charges. … At the time of her arrest, she listed her place of employment as the Florida Department of Health (DOH).”

Listen to DeSantis below:

And yet there’s still more.

According to The Palm Beach Post, the left’s latest hero “has been arrested on charges of robbery, trespassing, criminal mischief and contempt of court” in the past two years alone.

And so once again, it appears another left-wing “hero” has been exposed as a complete piece of garbage. Well done.

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Vivek Saxena
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