Florida knowledge scientist who states she was ousted in excess of COVID numbers sues state

The Florida facts scientist who suggests condition officials fired her for refusing to transform coronavirus quantities sued authorities Monday, alleging that a police raid on her house previously this month was an unlawful act of retaliation.

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In a 19-site complaint submitted in Tallahassee circuit court docket, attorneys for Rebekah Jones argued that officials with the Florida Section of Legislation Enforcement carried out the Dec. 7 raid to “silence” her on the web speech and curry favor with Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has criticized Jones and whose place of work explained she was fired in May well for repeated “insubordination.”

Jones, who served acquire the state’s coronavirus dashboard, attributed her ouster to her refusal to “manually modify info to drum up help for the strategy to reopen.”

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Graphic: Rebekah Jones (MSNBC)

Jones has considering that filed a whistleblower grievance with point out officers and created an additional coronavirus dashboard that her go well with describes as preferred with scientists and health care professionals for its “scrupulously exact and sincere info.”

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The division executed the Dec. 7 research warrant on Jones’ Tallahassee home just after she allegedly accessed a Office of Wellbeing-operate communications system and sent a Nov. 10 team text warning consumers that it was “time to talk up right before one more 17,000 persons are dead.”

The fit describes agents with their guns drawn aggressively coming into her home ahead of a person unnamed agent allegedly “ran his fingers up and down her ribs and grasped her sides just down below her breasts and held her” although Jones’ stood with her arms raised.

Throughout a two-hour lookup, the agents seized Jones’ computer, cell cell phone and other devices that composed her “entire details and reporting infrastructure,” the match suggests.

In an interview with NBC Information before this month, Jones denied sending the Nov. 10 message, and the go well with implies that somebody could have spoofed her IP deal with to obtain the condition-run communications system. The match notes that state officials had posted the platform’s login qualifications on the internet.

Following the raid, the go well with says, Jones and her spouse and children commenced receiving detest mail and harassing cellular phone phone calls immediately after state regulation enforcement officials produced a warrant that integrated her dwelling handle and other particular facts. (NBC News redacted that information.)

“She has been put in this sort of panic for her and her family’s protection that she is pulling up roots and relocating out of condition,” the suit states.

Requested earlier this thirty day period about the raid, the top formal at the Florida Department of Law Enforcement stated that agents “entered the property in accordance with usual protocols” after they known as Jones and knocked on the front door of her home.

Jones hung up on the brokers, said division commissioner Rick Swearingen, who is named in the match.

In a assertion Monday, Swearingen reported that he was “proud of the professionalism revealed by our FDLE brokers as they served a legal research warrant on the residence of Rebekah Jones. Our legal investigation continues, and whilst I have not observed this lawsuit, I believe that the info will come out in courtroom.”

The suit seeks at minimum $30,000 in damages and the release of Jones’ computer and other units.