Category: Florida

Gov. DeSantis Hires Christina Pushaw; Rebekah Jones Gets Crazier Than Ever

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When last we updated readers on the Rebekah Jones saga (“The Streisand Effect and the Results of Everybody Blog About Rebekah Jones Day,” Sunday), the reporting of Charles C.W. Cooke at National Review had devastated whatever was left of Jones’s “whistleblower” reputation.

Since Sunday, there have been further developments in the saga. First, Christina Pushaw, the journalist whose February report on Jones began the debunking of her “whistleblower” narrative, was announced Monday as the new press secretary for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis:

Governor Ron DeSantis has tapped conservative journalist and communicator Christina Pushaw to be his new press secretary.
Pushaw, who most recently worked as a freelance journalist publishing in national conservative outlets like The National Interest and Human Events, landed inside the Governor’s office as DeSantis transitions into campaign season. Born in California, Pushaw carved out a career in communications after graduating with a Bachelor’s degree in History from the University of Southern California. She also holds a Master’s degree in International Relations and Economics from Johns Hopkins University.
“Some people are surprised that I’m a conservative because I’m from one of the bluest areas in the country. But that’s precisely what shaped my views on policy. Growing up in California, I’ve seen firsthand the destruction caused by unfettered progressive control,” Pushaw told The Capitolist in an email. “The contrast between my home state of California and my adopted home state of Florida couldn’t be more dramatic.”
In addition to her freelance journalism work, Pushaw worked with conservative public policy organizations in Washington D.C. and has also worked as an international political communications consultant aiding pro-American political leaders and organizations in Eastern Europe, specializing in English-language media. Her experience working with political leaders and other organizations helped hone her skills in an often hostile media environment. One of her clients, Mikheil Saakashvili, has been an outspoken critic of Vladmir Putin. . . .
Pushaw first got onto the radar of the DeSantis administration for her willingness to call out the now thoroughly discredited “whistleblower” Rebekah Jones in a series of investigative stories, including a blockbuster exposé in Human Events in February. That story was among the first national media outlets to shine a light on major plot holes in Jones’ claims and in the media narrative she perpetuated. Jones was fired from Florida’s Department of Health last year and is currently awaiting trial on charges that she illegally accessed a state computer network.

Congratulations to Ms. Pushaw and, as for Jones, what do crazy people do when things go wrong? They get crazier:

As Twitchy readers know, Charles C.W. Cooke wrote a fairly exceptional piece on ‘fabulist’ Rebekah Jones for The National Review. Full disclosure, this editor just this morning had the time to sit down and really read it and all we can say is … wow.
Seems Jones wrote a response/blog about his piece.
And managed to misspell his last name throughout the entire thing.
Oh, and she apparently plans to sue him for libel as well?

Jones’s reply to Cooke is more than 9,000 words of pure craziness and, while I’m not professionally licensed to provide psychiatric diagnoses, it is my opinion as a layman that Jones is deranged, demented, daft, wacky, bonkers, non compos mentis, off her rocker, nuttier than a Snickers bar, a few fries short of a Happy Meal, and cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.

Meanwhile, CNN’s Jake Tapper, who promoted Jones’s “whistleblower” narrative as recently as December, has thrown her under his Twitter bus.




 

The Streisand Effect and the Results of Everybody Blog About Rebekah Jones Day

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Three months ago, almost everyone had forgotten about Rebekah Jones, and so most people didn’t pay too much attention when Christian Pushaw published a 2,000-word exposé in Human Events:

THE “FLORIDA COVID-19
WHISTLEBLOWER”
SAGA IS A BIG LIE

Pushaw’s article was published less than a month after the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, when the Biden presidency was just getting underway and few Americans were looking ahead to the political future. Yet to anyone with eyes focused as far forward as 2024, it was becoming apparent that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was well-positioned to contend for the next GOP presidential nomination. His handling of the state’s COVID-19 pandemic had been vindicated. Not only had DeSantis’s policies successfully protected Florida’s large population of retirees from the deadly virus, but his emphasis on rapidly reopening businesses had spared the state the economic damage experienced in states where draconian lockdown policies were imposed.

If Democrats wanted to sabotage DeSantis as a future rival, obviously the “whistleblower” claims of Rebekah Jones were potent ammunition, and thus Christina Pushaw’s article was important as a preemptive defense of DeSantis against attacks based on Jones’s claims. Jones then made the mistake of trying to silence Pushaw, seeking a peace order from a Maryland court “to suppress Ms. Pushaw’s First Amendment free speech and free press rights,” to quote my podcast partner John Hoge.

In response to that threat, we organized “Everybody Blog About Rebekah Jones Day.” For a while, it seemed that our efforts to publicize this situation had little impact, but Hoge kept pounding away at the story, and earlier this month, a Maryland judge dismissed the Jones v. Pushaw case.

Then last week, Charles C.W. Cooke did a National Review article about Jones that got widespread attention, including from The Daily Caller (“The Media Elevated A COVID-19 Conspiracy Theorist To Hurt Ron DeSantis”). So now everybody knows the story — demonstrating again how “The Streisand Effect” operates. The truth is great and will prevail.




 

Crazy People Are Dangerous: Florida Man Steals Two Cop Cars — ‘Illuminati, Help!’

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Xavier Cummings was high on meth and ranting about the CIA when Volusia County sheriff’s deputies finally put the cuffs on him:

The man accused of stealing two police cruisers and leading law enforcement on a high-speed pursuit in two counties had a bizarre outburst in court on Friday.
Xavier Cummings is being held in the Volusia County Jail on two counts of grand theft of a motor vehicle, two counts of grand theft of a firearm, escape as well as other charges.
When a judge denied Cummings bond on Friday, he had an outburst that caused him to be removed from the courtroom.
“Illuminati, help!” Cummings shouted.

(Spoiler: The Illuminati did not help.)

Deputies said Cummings told them following his arrest that he was given permission to take the Cocoa patrol car through mental telepathy.
The report indicates Cummings showed signs of experiencing mental-health issues, stated he used crystal meth earlier in the day, and had not slept in approximately 24 hours. . . .

(Earlier this week, I drank too much coffee, didn’t get enough sleep and made three typos. I didn’t steal a police car, though.)

The chase caught on a Volusia County sheriff’s helicopter video began when Cocoa police responded to a report of a disturbance near a Cocoa motel on Thursday afternoon.
Investigators said when officers confronted Cummings, he jumped into an unattended patrol car and drove away.

(Is Xavier Cummings a criminal genius, or what?)

Several Cocoa police officers then pursued Cummings on Interstate 95 into Volusia County before forcing the stolen cruiser off the road and into the woods between Edgewater and New Smyrna Beach.
When officers moved in to arrest Cummings, he emerged from the woods and jumped into another Cocoa Police Department vehicle and continued fleeing northbound on I-95, police said.

(Oh, he’s definitely a criminal genius.)

Police and deputies used stop sticks to disable the second police cruiser. At which point, Cummings was taken into custody without further incident.
No officers or deputies were injured.
Cummings is being held in the Volusia County Jail without bond.

This criminal genius will surely find a way to escape, with or without the assistance of the Illuminati. Meanwhile, watch the video:

 

Yeah, that crystal meth is a heckuva drug. Think I’ll stick with coffee, even if I did make three typos this week. “Illuminati, help!”




 

Update: Rebekah Jones ‘Could Not Meet Required Burden of Proof,’ Judge Rules

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Rebekah Jones, the former Florida health department employee who gained nationwide notice as a COVID-19 “whistleblower” last year, failed to silence one of her critics when a Maryland judge on Friday rejected Jones’s petition for a peace order against journalist Christina Pushaw.

Apparently the hearing was livestreamed (because of COVID-19), and Max Nordau had some interesting tidbits from Fridays’ proceedings:

Rebekah Jones doesn’t seem to understand what it means to be a “public figure,” and why her activities are newsworthy. She reminds me of certain feminists who think they can engage in political activism without ever being subject to disagreement or criticism. It’s “harassment” or even “terrorism” to disagree with a feminist — such was the essential claim made by Anita Sarkeesian, et al., during the #GamerGate controversy.

Jones has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars from her claim of being a “whistleblower” critic of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. This inherently makes her a newsworthy person, whose activities are subject to journalistic scrutiny. This attracted the attention of Christina Pushaw, who wrote a 2,000-word Human Events article about her:

THE “FLORIDA COVID-19
WHISTLEBLOWER”
SAGA IS A BIG LIE

This article was the most sustained negative coverage of Jones, who otherwise was basking in the warm sunshine of media adulation.

Well, into every life the rain must fall. You can’t soak up media praise — and exploit that praise for fundraising from “progressive” enemies of Florida’s Republican governor — and then cry “harassment” the first time a journalist writes a negative article about you. And, in the age of social media, it is to be expected that journalists will discuss their work on Twitter. If, in turn, such discussion means that your Twitter notifications are filled with harsh comments — well, whose fault is that? Perhaps Rebekah Jones should ask herself what kind of online comments were directed at Gov. DeSantis after Jones claimed the governor was falsifying Florida’s COVID-19 data. If Jones is a “victim” of anything, it’s the boomerang effect of her own decisions, which made her a hero to Democrats, but understandably enraged many Americans who do not share her partisan affiliation. Unless she can demonstrate that Christina Pushaw knowingly published falsehoods about her, Jones has no legal recourse. She ought to just take the “L” and go home.

Somehow, though, I doubt Jones will heed such advice.




 

Florida Woman Was in a Big Hurry to Reach Her Destination: Prison

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Jennifer Carvajal was behind the wheel of a Hyundai Elantra clocked on radar at 111 mph headed west on I-4 by a Florida Highway Patrol trooper. It was 1:30 a.m., and three passengers were in the car with Carvajal, who did not have a driver’s license, because she had violated her probation.

What was she on probation for? DUI manslaughter in 2014.

Yeah, that’s right — apparently you can kill somebody while driving drunk in Florida and you’re back on the streets in just a few years.

In 2016, Carvajal was sentenced to five years in prison, but was released in 2019. “According to Hillsborough Circuit Court Clerk records, she was then arrested in May [2020] for violating her probation with a drug-related charge and was sentenced to five more years probation.”

Did you get that? After killing somebody, then serving only three years in prison, she was arrested for drugs, a probation violation that could have sent her back to prison. But it’s Tampa, where all the judges are Democrats, so they just gave her more probation. Less than a year later, she was doing 111 mph on I-4 at 1:30 in the morning when the trooper caught her on radar. And when the trooper managed to catch up with her, Carvajal had a truly genius idea — right turn!

The result — don’t worry, you’ll see the video in a minute — looked like something your 4-year-would do with one of his Matchbox cars. The Hyundai went down the shoulder of the freeway, then ricocheted up the embankment on the other side of the ditch, crashed through a fence and went airborne into the lot of a car dealership, where it bounced off a truck, smashed through a concrete light pole and a palm tree, and then catapulted end over end before finally crashing into the pavement.

Jennifer Carvajal survived the crash because, despite her many errors of judgment, she was wearing a seatbelt. Her passengers, alas, were less fortunate. Two of them were seriously injured, and one of them was ejected from the car and fatally smashed to a bloody pulp.

 

My guess is that even the liberal Democrat judges in Tampa won’t be so lenient with Carvajal this time. It’s easy to laugh at “Florida woman,” until she makes a right turn at 111 mph and kills somebody.




 

Jones v. Pushaw Update

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After “Everybody Blog About Rebekah Jones Day,” it turns out that Friday’s hearing was a bit of a “meh.” John Hoge reports that the case was continued to April 30 because Christina Pushaw had not been properly served in the case. So we will have to wait another two weeks to learn whether Jones succeeds in her effort at shutuppery. But Jones was mystified by Hoge’s appearance at Friday’s hearing:

At the conclusion of the hearing, I left the courthouse immediately. I wanted to avoid any interaction with Jones, and I knew she would have to stay in the courtroom for a while in order to receive a copy of the case paperwork. I had turned off my phone in the courtroom, so I stopped on the sidewalk outside the courthouse to turn it on and make a couple of calls. As Jones left the building, turned to me and asked, “Do I know you?”
I replied, “No.”
She said, “You left at the end of my case. Were you there for me?”
I replied, “Yes.”
She said, “Thank you,” and walked away.

He’s like a comic-book hero: The Gray Ghost. We will discuss this on tonight’s episode (7 p.m. ET) of The Other Podcast.




 

The Ultimate ‘Florida Woman’? It’s Everybody Blog About Rebekah Jones Day

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Most people have forgotten who Rebekah Jones is, assuming they had ever heard of her before, but the media celebrated Jones as a “whistleblower” last year when she claimed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was manipulating his state’s COVID-19 case numbers. Jones got fired from her job at the Florida state health department. In December, police raided her home with a search warrant (photo above) and in January, she was charged with gaining “unauthorized access to state Department of Health systems in November to send an unauthorized message to employees and to download a list of contact information for approximately 19,000 people.” None of that really interests me at all, but last week I learned that Jones has moved to Maryland, where she has sought a peace order against Christina Pushaw, who in February published a devastating 2,000-word exposé about Jones.

At 9 a.m. Friday morning, there will be a hearing in a Montgomery County district courtroom about that peace order, so we have declared today to be “Everybody Blog About Rebekah Jones Day.”

My buddy John Hoge has been doing yeoman’s work on this story:

You can and should read all of those posts, which chronicle the many legal predicaments Jones has faced over the past few years. Perhaps the most important issue is whether Rebekah Jones is mentally stable. Some court documents I saw indicated that she has been prescribed medications for psychiatric problems and, while I have no professional credentials in the field of mental health, I have had a lot of experience dealing with crazy people. Certainly I suspect that Jones is deranged, demented, daft, wacky, bonkers, non compos mentis, off her rocker, nuttier than a Snickers bar and a few fries short of a Happy Meal.

Evil Blogger Lady has an extensive round-up today highlighting some of the bizarre “Florida woman” escapades of Rebekah Jones.

Wait, did I forget to mention she might be crazy?

Rebekah Jones, 30, was charged in July 2019 with stalking a former boyfriend — long before the pandemic that catapulted her into headlines and television interviews. Police said she published a 68-page document online discussing private details of her relationship with her former boyfriend, including explicit texts and nude photographs, and shared the link with him.
The two had sex in a classroom in 2017 when Jones was his married professor at Florida State University, the man told police. She was fired from the university after threatening to give a failing grade to his roommate as revenge, he said. Jones said the two had a six-month affair until October 2017, and the man is the father of her daughter born in July 2018.

As I say, I have no professional credentials in the field, but I think most people would agree that’s crazy as hell. Would anyone be surprised if Jones leaves the courtroom Friday in a straitjacket?

Remember: “What distinguishes ‘whistleblowers’ from ‘disgruntled ex-employees’ is credibility, and here Jones has a problem.”

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!




 

Lawfare: Do We Need to Have ‘Everybody Blog About Rebekah Jones Day’?

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Most people have forgotten about Rebekah Jones, but then again, most people never knew about Rebekah Jones in the first place. Nevertheless, Jones is something of a celebrity to soi-disant “progressives” because in May 2020, she falsely accused Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis of manipulating his state’s COVID-19 data to hide the real numbers. This earned Jones plaudits from the liberal media as a “whistleblower” despite the fact that her claims proved to be false. Jones, who majored in communications and geography, has no expertise in epidemiology. She had been hired by the Florida state health department to do mapping with geographic information system (GIS) software and apparently engaged in unauthorized activity that got her fired from her job. This made Jones a heroic martyr in the eyes of liberals who were eager to depict DeSantis as an “anti-science” bigot.

Nearly a year later, of course, even liberals have been compelled to admit that DeSantis did a much better job with the COVID-19 pandemic in Florida than did such Democrats as New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Events having validated the wisdom of DeSantis’s policy, Rebekah Jones would now seem to be irrelevant, destined to become a minor footnote in the history of this pandemic. But . . .

Florida is a swing state, DeSantis is being eyed as a potential 2024 Republican presidential candidate and, as seen in the recent dishonest smear from 60 Minutes, many in the media are still eager to tarnish DeSantis’s reputation by any means necessary. Also (a) Rebekah Jones collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions to support her “whistleblower” act, (b) she’s got a large and influential Twitter following, and (c) she still faces criminal prosecution in Florida. All of which means that Jones isn’t just going to fade quietly into obscurity, and she’s desperate to salvage her reputation. Unfortunately for Jones, she attracted the scrutiny of Human Events writer Christina Pushaw:

THE “FLORIDA COVID-19
WHISTLEBLOWER”
SAGA IS A BIG LIE

That 2,000-word article, published in February, is a must-read debunking of the Left’s hero/martyr myth about Rebekah Jones, and the result has been . . . Well, strangely familiar, for those who recall how Brett Kimberlin reacted to those who told the truth about him.

My podcasting partner (and former co-defendant) John Hoge has written a series of posts about the Jones v. Pushaw case:

What has happened, to summarize briefly, is that Rebekah Jones moved from Florida to Montgomery County, Maryland, and then swore out a peace order against Christina Pushaw, alleging “harassment.” Didn’t I tell you that this has been strangely familiar? And in yet another familiar move, Jones followed up by seeking criminal charges against Pushaw, alleging that she had violated a preliminary peace order. All of this is exceedingly weird, and also quite familiar to those of us who remember how Brett Kimberlin went after Aaron Walker (and subsequently sued half the Internet in federal court, but that’s another story).

I am informed that there will be a hearing in Montgomery County district court on Friday, and I wonder how y’all would feel about making Thursday “Everybody Blog About Rebekah Jones Day”?

The Streisand Effect here could be quite remarkable.