Last month, Rebekah Jones won her Florida Democratic primary after a last minute intervention by a judge got her back on the ballot. That means she’s now running against Matt Gaetz in the general election this November. But Jones is still facing legal problems stemming from her alleged hacking of a state communication system.
She was charged in January 2021 with illegally accessing the computer system in November 2020.
Authorities accused her of sending a message on an internal Department of Health multi-user messaging account.
“It’s time to speak up before another 17,000 people are dead. You know this is wrong. You don’t have to be part of this. Be a hero. Speak out before it’s too late,” the message said. Jones denied sending the message.
Jones and her attorneys were discussing a plea deal in the case this summer but she claims things changed after she won the primary and now she’s decided to take her chances at a trial. [emphasis added]
Jones told the News Journal that before the primary, she had been working on a plea deal with prosecutors. Jones said her attorneys had been negotiating on two conditions of the deal, one of which required an admission of guilt. Jones said she was willing to admit she shared in the responsibility for influencing someone else to send the mass text message.
Jones provided emails between her attorney and prosecutors that showed the plea deal was being negotiated…
However, on Aug. 24, a day after Jones won the Democratic primary, Cappleman offered a new plea deal, now with 11 conditions including that Jones withdraw her case before the Florida Commission on Human Relations and pay the state $21,123 for the cost of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s investigation into Jones.
The agreement also required Jones to see a licensed mental health professional for one hour per month and perform 100 hours of community service.
READ RELATED: Suddenly the NYT finds Trump charming
If you’ve been following the Rebekah Jones saga then you already know that the things she says don’t always turn out to be true. In this case, Jones has been directing people to this Substack story to prove her plea deal was politicized. The story is written by Grant Stern who is involved with Occupy Democrats, so not exactly a neutral source.
Paper copies of public records with the state’s discussion of a plea deal arrived at this reporter’s place of business, depicting a process stalled until the results of Jones’ primary became available…
“How did you get this?” asked Rebekah Jones when sent a request for comment about the documents before referring the matter to her lawyers.
The documents do appear to back up Jones’ claim that the plea deal changed pretty substantially from an admission of guilt to a longer list of requirements, including that Jones see a mental health professional, etc. Stern, the author of the Substack story, contacted a few Florida legal experts who said the change looked out of line to them.
As for how Stern got the documents, I don’t believe he got them without Rebekah Jones help. I find her quote expressing surprise especially hard to believe especially since Jones herself gave the same documents to the author of the Pensacola News Journal story I quoted above. (That’s the bit in bold.) So, once again, I think she’s lying even when elements of her story are true.
In any case, Jones will now be heading to trial on January 23rd. By that time she’ll either be a failed congressional candidate or a congresswoman. She obviously wasn’t going to agree to any kind of plea admitting guilt once she became a candidate as that would undermine her whole brand as a persecuted whistleblower. So I think the trial was probably inevitable once she won the primary, regardless of what the prosecutors offered.
Here’s Jones giving her side of the story. As you’ll see, she’s claiming that she’s still planning to take down Gov. DeSantis and get him to testify under oath. Is she talking about her trial or some fantasy trial in her head? I honestly don’t know. But I guess all of this makes for a compelling drama and keeps her supporters glued to her TikTok account for all the latest developments.
@georebekah
Source:
