Rebekah Jones Signs Deferred Prosecution Agreement, Admits Guilt, Lies about It, Raises More Money

By Charles C. W. Cooke

Friday, December 09, 2022

 

Rebekah Jones, the disgraced fabulist who was fired from the Florida Department of Health for insubordination and other assorted lunacy, has entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the State of Florida:

 

Rebekah Jones, a former Florida Department of Health data scientist, on December 7 accepted a plea deal with prosecutors, meaning she will avoid a January 23 trial in Leon County on a felony count of offenses against users of (computers).

 

According to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, “Evidence retrieved from a search warrant (in December 2020) shows that Jones illegally accessed the (FDOH) system sending a message to approximately 1,750 people and downloaded confidential FDOH data and saved it to her devices.”

 

As a condition of the deferred prosecution agreement, Jones agreed to the following special conditions:

 

·         Pay $20,000 in investigative fees to Florida Department of Law

 

·         Enforcement at a rate of $200 per month until paid in full;

 

·         Perform 150 hours of community services at a minimum rate of 13 hours per month;

 

·         See a licensed mental health professional for at least one hour per month

 

·         Admits guilt to the offense(s) charged

 

·         Pay $100 fee to State Attorney’s Office upon filing of agreement

 

Jones for a period of 24 months must also abide by other pre-trial intervention conditions, including but not limited to: refrain from violation of any criminal law; work regularly at a lawful occupation; not use intoxicants to excess; submit to and pay for random urinalysis; and report to pre-trial intervention officer each month as directed.

 

As is now customary, Jones is lying about what happened. In a post on her blog yesterday, Jones went out of her way to characterize the deal as “a total dismissal . . . for a fee.” It was not. It was a deferred prosecution agreement, of precisely the sort that Jones has entered into repeatedly in her past. The agreement stipulates that Jones is guilty, and that she must admit to that guilt. In addition, Jones is obliged to perform community service, see a licensed mental-health professional, and pay restitution. If she violates any of these conditions within two years, Florida can resume the prosecution.

 

In a separate post, published today, Jones described “the state agreeing to drop its case against me.” “In order to have the case dropped,” she wrote, “I had to agree to pay the police a large sum of money.” Again: This is not true. The state has agreed to defer the case for 24 months — not drop it — in exchange for the meeting of certain criteria, one of which is that Jones admits that she’s guilty.

 

Since she signed the agreement, Jones has raised another $8,000 on GoFundMe.