FDLE confirmed the search after Jones, a data scientist and staunch critic of Gov. Ron DeSantis‘ pandemic response, took to Twitter to announce that state police had seized her “hardware and tech” from her Tallahassee residence.
At the end of last month, the Tampa Bay Times reported that a hacker sent State Emergency Response Team members text messages through a state system reserved for emergencies only. The Nov. 10 message urged recipients to “speak up before another 17,000 people are dead. You know this is wrong. You don’t have to be a part of this. Be a hero. Speak out before it’s too late,” according to the Times.
“Agents believe someone at the residence on Centerville Court illegally accessed the system,” according to the FDLE spokesperson. “Our investigation is active. As in all cases, our role is to determine the facts of what happened and a State Attorney determines whether or not charges are filed.”
Monday afternoon, Jones tweeted a video showing officers serving the warrant.
“They pointed a gun in my face. They pointed guns at my kids,” she said. “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.”
“This is what happens to scientists who do their job honestly,” she continued. “This is what happens to people who speak truth to power. I tell them my husband and my two children are upstairs… and THEN one of them draws his gun. On my children. This is Desantis’ Florida.”
Jones was fired in May for what the DeSantis administration called repeated insubordination. Jones contends she was fired for refusing to manipulate DOH coronavirus data.
“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,” DeSantis’ then-spokeswoman Helen Aguirre Ferré said in May. “Having someone disruptive cannot be tolerated during this public pandemic, which led the Department to determine that it was best to terminate her employment.”
That month, DeSantis accused the national media of latching onto the story because claims Florida would become the next Italy of the pandemic didn’t come true.
“Maybe it’s that there are black helicopters circling the Department of Health,” he said. “If you believe that, I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you.”
This article first appeared at Florida Politics.
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This article appears in Dec 3-9, 2020.