‘It was not a raid’: Florida Gov. DeSantis defends search warrant against controversial scientist

Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis on Friday pushed back against media allegations that state law enforcement had "raided" the Tallahassee home of a controversial scientist who has been critical of the state's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Rebekah Jones, a data scientist and former Florida Department of Health employee who earlier in the year was fired from her position managing the state's coronavirus dashboard, has been at the center of minor controversy in the Sunshine State for several months over claims that the state ordered her to manipulate COVID-19 data.

Her refusal to do so, she said, was what led to her being fired. The state has countered that she was dismissed for insubordination. Following her firing, Jones launched her own COVID-19 dashboard, one that has shown moderately higher COVID cases in the state using different data metrics.

On Monday of this week, Florida Department of Law Enforcement officials served a search warrant at Jones's home, claiming that an unauthorized use of the state health department's internal emergency alert system had been traced to Jones's computer's IP address.

Multiple media outlets characterized the execution of the warrant as a "raid," including one journalist speaking to DeSantis at a Friday press conference, a claim which he sharply criticized.

"It's not a raid. With all due respect, what you just said is editorializing," he said.

"These people did their jobs," he said. "They've been smeared as the Gestapo for doing their job. They did a search warrant."

"Why did they do a search warrant on the house?" he continued. "Because her IP address was linked to the felony. What were they supposed to do? Just ignore it? Of course not, they went, they followed protocol."

Referring to the unauthorized use of the emergency alert system, DeSantis said: "Law enforcement looked at the intrusion, they identified the IP address, then they did what any investigator would do, they subpoenaed the internet provider, the internet provider provided this residence as the IP address that did the intrusion."

"They're probably going to be able to match the devices to the intrusion," he added, "at which point that's clearly a felony offense."