A declare by knowledge professional Rebekah Jones that her bosses on the Florida Division of Well being deliberately falsified COVID case knowledge as Gov. Ron DeSantis was making an attempt to reopen the state is unfounded, based on an inner inspector normal’s report performed by her former company.

“Primarily based upon an evaluation of the obtainable proof, the alleged conduct, as described by the complainant, didn’t happen,” the report stated, referring to that allegation in Jones’ whistleblower grievance.

Two different allegations by Jones, that directives have been issued by higher-ups to falsify COVID-19 positivity charges, have been deemed “unsubstantiated” as a result of “based mostly upon an evaluation of the obtainable proof, there’s inadequate proof to obviously show or disprove the alleged conduct.”

The report, launched this week, does acknowledge that the proof helps Jones’ separate declare that two of the company’s prime medical doctors ordered Jones and others to limit public entry to COVID case knowledge after the Miami Herald requested a query about it. Nonetheless, the report signifies the information was later restored after issues about exposing non-public data have been allayed.

Eradicating the information from public entry didn’t violate “any governing directive,” the report stated, so the officers she accused of wrongdoing have been “exonerated.”

Jones, who was accountable for sustaining the COVID-19 knowledge dashboard for the Florida Division of Well being, was fired in Might 2020 for insubordination after going public along with her issues.

On the coronary heart of Jones’ declare was that the information collected by epidemiologists was correct and sufficient, however the data was not being communicated to the general public within the midst of a public well being disaster.

Jones didn’t undergo an interview by inspector normal investigators however answered the inspector normal’s questions in writing and supplied the company with a 530-page written rebuttal to the report’s preliminary findings.

“If ordering a state worker to cover knowledge throughout a disaster for the only objective of the general public and media to not maintain them accountable will not be towards the coverage or rule, then it must be,” she advised the Miami Herald.

The 27-page inspector normal investigation, which concerned interviewing 13 present and former Division of Well being officers and contractors, happened between January 2021 and March 2022. It included no coverage suggestions.

Requested to touch upon whether or not the report would result in any adjustments in offering entry to public data throughout a public well being emergency, each Jeremy Redfern, chief public data officer for the Division of Well being, and the governor’s communications director, Taryn Fenske, replied: “The report speaks for itself.”

Nationwide profile

On the finish of her tenure, Jones turned a controversial public determine, attacked by DeSantis by identify. For someday afterward, she turned a frequent visitor on cable information shops. She additionally turned an aggressive Twitter combatant till her account was suspended in June 2021 for allegedly violating Twitter guidelines.

Earlier that 12 months, in January, armed officers of the Florida Division of Legislation Enforcement raided her home and seized her digital units, alleging she had damaged right into a state messaging system and inspired her former co-workers to “converse up.”

The controversies introduced Jones nationwide media consideration, allowed her to boost substantial quantities of cash by a GoFundMe marketing campaign, and fueled the governor’s dissatisfaction with the mainstream media. On the similar time, she created her personal COVID-19 dashboard utilizing state knowledge that competed with the state’s dashboard.

Jones’ legal professional, Rick Johnson of Tallahassee, stated Friday the inspector normal “couldn’t conclude that the proof proves or disproves the 2 principal allegations” — that Jones’ bosses directed falsification of knowledge and pressured her to falsify COVID positivity charges. He stated his consumer intends to proceed to pursue her wrongful termination declare earlier than the Florida Council on Human Relations.

“Sadly, this impartial discovering is labeled ‘unsubstantiated’ however they clarify that basically means too near name, not a win for (the Division of Well being),” Johnson stated. “And a impartial discovering from DeSantis’ personal crew is pretty much as good as a win for us.”

He added that despite the fact that the inspector normal discovered the state suppressed some COVID knowledge, “it isn’t technically unlawful, however it’s clearly incorrect.”

The investigation is the most recent improvement in a two-year battle involving Jones, now a long-shot Democratic candidate for Congress working towards Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Shalimar in North Florida.

Jones had labored on the Division of Well being since September 2018 and commenced work on the COVID-19 dashboard in early March 2020.

In late April of that 12 months, DeSantis introduced a slideshow to a information convention to announce that each one counties however three in South Florida would carry stay-home orders for a lot of nonessential companies.

As DeSantis was making ready to finish COVID-19 restrictions so as to reopen the state for enterprise, Jones alleged that Shamarial Roberson, the now-former deputy secretary of the Florida Division of Well being, had directed her to “manipulate” knowledge on the state’s COVID-19 digital dashboard to downplay the excessive case rely in rural counties. A low positivity price in every county was wanted to fulfill the White Home benchmarks for reopening the state.

Roberson denied she ordered Jones to control knowledge and, after Jones allegedly threatened to file a whistleblower grievance, DeSantis accused Jones of insubordination and fired her.

“Our knowledge is clear,” DeSantis stated on Might 20, 2020, with Vice President Mike Pence standing silently beside him, in a denunciation of the information media that went viral on Twitter.

‘Take it down’

The occasions that culminated in Jones’ dismissal started with an e-mail from a Herald reporter on Might 4, 2020. Reporters have been inquiring about one thing that they had seen within the Division of Well being’s printed knowledge: a variable that indicated diseases relationship again into late December 2019 and proof of group unfold sooner than beforehand reported.

In response to inner Division of Well being emails obtained by the Herald, the Herald’s query was referred from the communications director to Carina Blackmore, the director of illness management, who emailed that it ought to be answered by somebody “excessive degree.” It then bounced across the crew of epidemiologists and, when nobody wished to reply, landed on Jones’ lap.

The Herald’s query had been prompted by a discrepancy it discovered within the COVID Open Knowledge hub, an open-source website that has lengthy been run by the state to deal with de-identified particular person circumstances of tracked illnesses. It incorporates restricted demographic data in addition to dates related to every case and is broadly utilized by researchers, epidemiologists and journalists.

“This complete website wants to come back down,” Division of Well being epidemiologist Scott Pritchard wrote in an e-mail to Blackmore after receiving the query concerning the knowledge hub.

Blackmore stated in her assertion that’s when she gave the order — “take it down.”

“That is the incorrect name,” Jones wrote in an e-mail to her IT supervisor, Craig Curry, earlier than doing as she was advised.

The following day, Jones’ managers eliminated the dashboard’ from her management and accused her of publishing “unauthorized” knowledge, based on the emails supplied to the Herald that weren’t included within the inspector normal’s report.

Blackmore stated in her sworn assertion that Jones was fired for having had “in depth, unauthorized, communication with dashboard customers, together with reporters, concerning the knowledge on the dashboard and the case-line knowledge.”

In July 2020, Jones filed a whistleblower grievance with the Florida Fee on Human Relations and that led to the inspector generla’s investigation.

The inspector normal’s report was accomplished and signed on March 9 by Michael Bennett, the Division of Well being inspector normal. He stories to the state surgeon normal and the Florida chief inspector normal, who works for the governor.

‘Inadequate proof’

Bennett concluded there was no proof that Roberson or Courtney Coppola, the previous Division of Well being chief of employees, ordered Jones or different employees to falsify new COVID case positivity charges, as Jones claimed, and the report suggests her declare is subsequently “unsubstantiated.”

“Primarily based upon an evaluation of the obtainable proof, there’s inadequate proof to show or disprove that Dr. Roberson ordered a subordinate to misrepresent positivity charges or that that subordinate then relayed the order right down to Jones,” the report states.

In her rebuttal, Jones disputed a declare that she didn’t have entry to the uncooked knowledge on the state’s illness reporting system referred to as Merlin, stating that she “labored with an extracted copy of all uncooked knowledge from Merlin, and wrote the code to independently combination it herself.”

Jones supplied the inspector normal with a course of by which investigators might take a look at her declare however there is no such thing as a indication within the report it was carried out.

Knowledge briefly eliminated

Concerning the declare that Jones’ bosses have been concerned in withholding the data from the general public, the report confirms it occurred, albeit briefly.

The inspector normal’s report echoes the Division of Well being place assertion and states that knowledge from the open knowledge hub was eliminated solely “quickly” for a high quality assurance examine.

Emails, not included within the report and reviewed by the Herald, present that Blackmore thought of republishing the case line knowledge after realizing that the removing of the general public knowledge precipitated the case numbers to vanish from the Division of Well being web site. Even then, she didn’t need the data public, she stated in a Might 5 e-mail.

“I had nice issues these could possibly be used to violate sufferers’ privateness,” Blackmore stated in her assertion in Jones’ whistleblower case, additionally obtained by the Herald. “I additionally had nice issues about exterior customers manipulating Florida knowledge with out steering on the strengths and limitations of those knowledge.”

Jones confirmed to the inspector normal’s workplace “that COVID-19 knowledge was not deleted; quite, entry to the dashboard’s underlying knowledge was quickly eliminated after which restored,” the report stated.

Roberson, Blackmore, and Pritchard every testified throughout their sworn interviews that they “have been unaware the dashboard contained an open ‘knowledge hub’ when the dashboard was first activated,” the inspector normal’s report stated.

Jones disputes that and, in her response, produced emails that she says contradict these claims.

“Dr. Roberson, Dr. Blackmore, and Mr. Pritchard directed the complainant to limit entry to underlying knowledge that supported what appeared on the COVID-19 Knowledge and Surveillance Dashboard,” the report concluded. However the inspector normal’s report stated the decision is that they’re “Exonerated.”

Miami Herald reporter Sarah Blaskey contributed to this report.