Leaked documents depict politicized prosecution of Florida whistleblower

State authorities made their plea offer to Rebekah Jones significantly worse the day after she won a congressional primary election.

Leaked documents expose what multiple former prosecutors describe as the improper influence of politics in handling a felony charge leveled against Florida’s Covid-19 whistleblower Rebekah Jones.

The story of Rebekah Jones’s journey from an unknown Florida Department of Health (FDOH) employee to a whistleblower to a congressional candidate began with the outbreak of the novel coronavirus pandemic at the end of 2019.

Two weeks ago, the day after she won a Democratic congressional primary to face off against Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), state attorneys offered her a significantly worse deal to end a long-running criminal case against Jones, raising the appearance of impropriety.

Paper copies of public records with the state’s discussion of a plea deal arrived at this reporter’s place of business, depicting a process stalled until the results of Jones’ primary became available. (Author’s note: The documents have been redacted to remove personal contact information, which could be used to harass the lawyers.)

State attorneys pursuing charges against Jones began negotiating a plea bargain in June, according to her recent interview in an educational publication. But the newly obtained public records show that the outline of a final DPA appeared to be on the table in late July.

However, Georgia Cappleman, the head of Felony Division D in the 2nd judicial circuit’s State Attorney’s office, nonetheless waited until the day after she won the state’s 1st congressional district Democratic primary to make a new, harsher offer.

Three former prosecutors who are in private practice today called it a politically motivated move.

“How did you get this?” asked Rebekah Jones when sent a request for comment about the documents before referring the matter to her lawyers.

“No comment,” said her lawyer Tom Findley before abruptly hanging up.

It was Chief assistant state attorney Georgia Cappleman who sent an offer on July 25th, which only required Jones to pay a $100 fee to the SAO, admit guilt, and perform 150 hours of community service to have the charges dropped in a Deferred Prosecution Agreement (DPA).

At the time, she told lawyers for Jones that she had just then returned from vacation. Four days later, the Chief said she had to “consult with many folks” before the SAO would approve the deal.

Then, despite presumably being just back from vacation, Cappleman went radio silent from July 29th through August 24th, exactly one day after Rebekah Jones won her Democratic primary with 62% of the vote.

That is when the assistant state attorney raised her office’s plea demands to include a greater than $21,000 payment to the Florida Department of Law enforcement, withdrawal of her whistleblower claim filed with the Florida Commission on Human Rights before her arrest, and to waive all future civil claims against the state over her employment.

What is most puzzling about the enlarged conditions Cappelman outlined to settle the case is that the prosecutor requested the return of data which the National Review and later the Florida Governor’s office both claim that she did not possess.

Prosecutors cited Jones’ remarks in a podcast interview which she recorded this spring to advance their new claim.

“No,” said Cappleman by phone when asked for comment to confirm that her office offered a Deferred Prosecution Agreement to Jones. “We cannot comment on plea negotiations at all.”

“She has indicated that she does not wish to resolve the case with a plea,” said the prosecutor, “and it has been set for trial.”

Here are the newly proposed terms:

Former prosecutors weigh in on the offer to Jones.

“It certainly doesn’t look good,” wrote former prosecutor Robert Scavone, Jr., by email, who from 2017 through earlier this year worked at the Palm Beach County, Florida, state attorney’s office.

When asked if the timing of the DPA negotiations constituted the appearance of impropriety, Scavone Jr. is a legal podcaster and former law clerk to Judge Barbara Lagoa, now sitting on the federal 11th circuit court of appeals, wrote, “Prosecuting offices must avoid politics like the plague. The integrity of the system and public trust depends on it. The fact that the conditions of the DPA became more harsh after the primaries seems unusual, to say the least. But I do want to point out that I do not have all of the facts. Sometimes correlation is not causation.”

“I’m calling bullshit,” said Susy Ribero-Ayala, a Coral Gables, Florida, criminal defense lawyer in private practice with experience at the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s office. “I’m seeing more of these politically charged investigations during election season. This is the kind of thing you see in 3rd world countries to deter people from running for office.”

“This is like Comey and the Clinton emails. Same thing” concluded Ribero-Ayala.

“This is looking like the prosecutor who got swayed by political forces,” said civil rights lawyer Melba Pearson by phone, who spent three years as the ACLU of Florida’s Deputy Director after a 14-year stint at the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s office. “When they made the initial offer, that to me indicated the prosecutor’s real view of the worth of the case. When you start talking about $20,000 and major community service and dropping a whistleblower retaliation lawsuit, that speaks to me of politics.”

“This plea is completely coercive, as dictated by certain political elements. A prosecutor should not allow themselves to be treated as a pawn,” says Pearson, who ran for Miami-Dade State Attorney as a Democrat in 2020, about the disparate plea deals introduced only the day after the end of a political primary. “That’s not justice.”

Furthermore, each former prosecutor particularly made remarks about the use of the state attorney’s office to seek release from civil liability from Jones, whose whistleblower complaint to the Florida Commission on Human Rights is still ongoing.

“Prosecutors should not be wading into civil matters, not in the state of Florida,” said Pearson about the State Attorney’s request for a waiver of all claims of “discrimination, harassment, and retaliation” by Jones against the Florida Department of Health.

“As a former prosecutor, I would say it is your job to prosecute crimes, not to preclude civil lawsuits against any other agency or person. You have to remain independent, judge the facts independently, and not put politics in the equation,” Ribero-Ayala commented on the state’s request of the famous whistleblower. “For example, I represented a police officer with 40 years experience who got wrongfully arrested, and I got a copy of the video which proved was an unlawful arrest by the City of Coral Gables. The SAO was going to no action [dismiss] the case, and they *asked* if he would not sue, but they would not put it in writing.” (Speaker’s emphasis)

When asked if it’s appropriate for a prosecutor to ask a criminal defendant to waive their rights to a civil case against the State in a criminal plea deal, Scavone Jr. replied, “This would not be appropriate from my perspective. For example, the State should not ask a criminal defendant to dismiss an excessive force claim against the officers in the criminal case as a condition of the plea. And in that situation, the civil and criminal matters would be related.”

“I recall a case where we charged a county employee with using a county computer system to commit fraud,” Scavone Jr. continued, “As part of the plea, the employee had to voluntarily resign from the county. In a way, that was a “resolution” to an employment matter. The important point here is that there was a nexus between the charged crime and the employment, so I think it was appropriate. But, if by “resolution” you mean asking a defendant to drop a civil lawsuit, then no; I do not think that would be appropriate, especially if the criminal conduct and civil matter are unrelated.”

The messages from Chief assistant state attorney Cappelman seem to indicate that the “stakeholders” she consulted may have been agencies outside of law enforcement.

“From a practical and moral perspective, you want to make sure what you’re doing is in the public interest and not unduly prosecuting an individual,” says Pearson about the unusual situation. “While a prosecutor should listen to stakeholders in a case, they shouldn’t blindly follow their demands for punishment.”

Today, prosecutors filed formal documents indicating that they will seek to take the case to trial against Jones next January.

But a plea bargain agreement can be entered any time prior to a trial or its conclusion.

“Jones is a whistleblower trying to surface information that people want to remain hidden,” remarked Melba Pearson about the broader circumstances of the case. “That alone could be enough to sway a jury to a not guilty verdict.”

From state employee to whistleblower

In her previous employment at the state Department of Health, Rebekah Jones designed the state of Florida’s graphical information system to present case data in early 2020 at the start of the global pandemic. It was part of the Covid-19 response in Florida, which former President Trump regularly lauded.

But by mid-May 2020, Jones started to speak out about what she believed to be pressure from above to manipulate the state’s virus data for political reasons after she was terminated for bringing her concerns to management at FDOH.

That July, she filed a whistleblower complaint alleging workplace retaliation with the Florida Commission on Human Relations, the one prosecutors want her to abandon today.

On December 7th, 2020, officers from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement raided Jones’ home with their guns drawn, confiscating her cell phones, computers, and other gear. The following January, Jones filed suit against the police over the raid, and two days after the first hearing in the civil case, prosecutors filed a single 3rd-degree felony charge against her, alleging unlawful computer access in order to send a single email message.

Earlier this year, two reports came out, one from FDOH’s inspector general assessing Rebekah Jones’ whistleblower claims and the second from FDOH’s data auditor. The inspector general’s report did not find sufficient evidence to take disciplinary action against Jones’ supervisors, all of whom have since left the agency. The data auditor’s report concluded that the state of Florida undercounted Covid cases and deaths.