Statement from Chairman Joe Gruters:

On Monday, June 7 Twitter suspended the account of notorious disinformation blogger, Rebekah Jones, for violating their terms of use including platform manipulation and spam.  In short, Jones was caught violating the terms of service of the social media platform for buying followers, amongst others.  It is noteworthy that Rebekah Jones is not being censored for her repeated lies and baseless claims on Twitter. Interestingly, her account is being suspended only for violating specific terms of service, and she has not been deplatformed.

Being dishonest is not unusual for Rebekah Jones. She has been fired from several places of employment, and most recently from her last position at the Florida Department of Health where she was terminated for repeatedly refusing to follow the direction of her supervisors and stealing data.

Rebekah Jones is currently facing two criminal cases one for allegedly breaching Florida’s Department of Health system and downloading personnel data and a second one, for unrelated stalking charges.

Rebekah Jones has a history of making bad decisions – she was fired for having sex with a student in a classroom at Florida State University, and in Louisiana she was charged with battery of a police officer.

And if that isn’t enough, Rebekah Jones is also characterized as a grifter.  After being terminated by the Florida Department of Health, it was reported that she set up more than one GoFundMe account to raise money for herself and to purportedly create a new COVID 19 dashboard. Why has no one written about that fact that Rebekah Jones is now living in upscale Chevy Chase, Maryland and potentially donating public funds to at least one political campaign in Florida?

And one benefactor, as reported by The Capitolist, of Jones’ newly acquired funding is Florida’s Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried who recently announced a run for governor in 2022. It also appears that Rebekah Jones even went so far as to contribute to Fried’s campaign for governor.  If that were to be the case, Nikki Fried should immediately return the money to Rebekah Jones.

Fried, along with her Democrat opponent Charlie Crist have publicly and intentionally promoted Rebekah Jones’ lies and distortions in a cheap attempt at political gain.  Both Fried and Crist should publicly disavow Rebekah Jones.  And they should do so, not only to preserve their careers and reputations, but rather for the hundreds of men and women who work at the Florida Department of Health and Florida Division of Emergency Management whose outstanding work over the last year has been maligned by Jones.

These public servants deserve great recognition for working tirelessly for the past year and a half to help provide Floridians with good public health access and policy during the global pandemic. Jones’ baseless claims have detracted from the good work they have been doing to ensure Floridians remained informed during the COVID 19 pandemic.

Chairman Joe Gruters
Republican Party of Florida