DeSantis, experienced with search-warrant "raids," misses chance to be voice of reason

When it comes to distinguishing between a “raid” and a lawfully conducted search warrant, we have a real authority here in the state of Florida.

It’s our beloved Gov. Ron DeSantis, an Ivy-League educated lawyer with some relevant experience when it comes to search warrants drenched in politics.

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In December of 2020, some 20 months before FBI agents executed a search warrant at the Mar-a-Lago Club for boxes of government secrets being stored there by former President Donald Trump, armed agents from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) searched the Tallahassee condominium unit of a fired Florida Department of Health data analyst in order to confiscate her cell phone, laptop computer, and flash drives.

COVID Whistleblower fights state

The analyst, Rebekah Jones, had been fired after publicly claiming that state officials had pressured her to misrepresent the COVID-19 data in order to paint a rosy picture that supported DeSantis’ position to ease virus precautions in Florida during the pandemic.

Jones signed on to a state emergency alert system and sent an open text message to state employees that read, “It’s time to speak up before another 17,000 people are dead. You know this is wrong. You don’t have to be a part of this. Be a hero. Speak out before it’s too late.”

Within a month after sending that message, an FDLE agent who was part of the state-federal FBI Cyber Task Force went to a Florida circuit court judge, filing an affidavit that sought and received permission from the judge to search Jones’ house to confiscate her electronic devices.

The search warrant affidavit had said that agents had traced the origin of the open message to Jones’ home, and that this former state employee’s use of the emergency alert system constituted an unauthorized criminal breach of the state’s communications network.

Jones posted a video of the morning arrival of the FDLE agents, who showed up with guns drawn. And she claimed very publicly that this was political retribution against her by DeSantis over her refusal to manipulate the state’s COVID-19 data.

"They took evidence of corruption at the state level,” she posted on Twitter about the search. “They claimed it was about a security breach. This was DeSantis. He sent the gestapo."

Jones would later sue the FDLE, then drop the lawsuit. The Florida Office of Inspector General would eventually determine that her claims regarding COVID-19 data manipulation were either unfounded or unsubstantiated.

But in the days after the December 2020 search of her home, the news centered around whether the state’s search was more about politics than security.

When is a "raid" not a raid?

“Florida police raid home of former COVID-19 scientist,” the headline on a CNN.com story read.

One person who took particular umbrage to the use of the word “raid” to describe the search of Jones’ home was DeSantis.

When taking questions during a public event, a news reporter asked DeSantis if he had prior knowledge of “the raid” on Jones’ home, which set him off on a two-minute monologue.

DeSantis blasts narrative feeding

Here’s DeSantis’ verbatim response:

It’s not a raid. With all due respect, what you just said is editorializing. I’m not going to let you get away with it. 

These people did their jobs, they’ve been smeared as the Gestapo for doing their jobs. 

They did a search warrant. Why did they do a search warrant? Because the IP address on the house was linked to the felony. 

What were they supposed to do, just ignore it? Of course not. 

They went, they followed protocol. We actually have video from the Tallahassee PD showing that they were very respectful. She was not cooperative. It was not a raid. 

They were serving valid process in accordance with the laws and Constitution of the United States and the state of Florida. They did it with integrity, they did it with honor and to say it’s a “raid” is disinformation, and you guys need to look at facts and stop trying to feed narratives. 

I understand why you do it, but it’s not supported by facts, so you should be better than that.

Familiar echoes with Mar-a-Lago search

Now, let’s fast-forward to last week and the search warrant executed at Mar-a-Lago to recover state secrets. There are some similarities.

In both cases, law enforcement officers filed an affidavit before a judge, an affidavit alleging that crimes had been committed over the misuse of restricted-use government information.

Granted, the seriousness of the Mar-a-Lago breach was in a whole different league of harm.

Jones ran afoul of the law for gaining access to a state information network that had publicly posted the login and password information on the Florida Department of Health’s open website. Hardly Tom Clancy material. (Charges have yet to be filed against her for this.)

But Trump had possession of boxes of highly classified national secrets missing from their secure storage with the National Archives, and kept by him at a Florida country club — a business, not a private home — that has hundreds of civilian members, beach access and a workforce that includes dozens of  foreign workers.

These documents, which Trump has repeatedly failed to return over the course of a year, contain not only top secret information but also Sensitive Compartmented Information — top secret information that is so sensitive that it is restricted to be read in special rooms by people with the highest level of security.

Trump has been auditioning all sorts of bad excuses for his retention of national secrets at the Florida club. Everything from they’re not classified at all, to the FBI planted them there, to the obligatory Obama did it too lie.

And Republican lawmakers have, as in the past, validated his lawlessness by pretending it’s all OK.

U.S. Sen. Rand Paul has gone so far as to suggest scrapping the Espionage Act, which is one of the crimes the FBI alleges that Trump may have violated by misappropriating materials that divulge national secrets. U.S. Sen. Rick Scott characterized the lawfully obtained FBI search as Gestapo tactics.

But you’d figure that DeSantis wouldn’t fall into the coward caucus that the Republican Party has become. That this would be DeSantis’ moment to stand up and be the adult in the room.

After all, he’s got some experience in this. While his colleagues keep talking about the FBI “raid” on Mar-a-Lago, he could be harkening back to the time the search warrant at Rebekah Jones’ home was called a raid.

DeSantis has chance to be voice of reason

This is your moment, Gov. DeSantis. Show us what real leadership looks like.

OK, I may have set you up for a bit of disappointment here. It turns out DeSantis didn’t push back against the Republican misinformation. No, it would be more accurate to say that he tried to push his way to the front of the line, making sure he had a good seat in the clown car.

“The raid on Mar-a-Lago is another escalation in the weaponization of federal agencies against the regime’s political opponents, while people like Hunter Biden get treated with kid gloves,” DeSantis wrote. “Now the Regime is getting another 87K IRS agents to wield against its adversaries? Banana republic.”

Where does one begin to unpack that?

First of all, why is this a “raid”, and not the same kind of legally executed search warrant DeSantis carefully described in the Jones case?

To echo his own words, I don’t think we should let DeSantis get away with editorializing the legally executed search the FBI agents conducted at Mar-a-Lago and insinuating that it was somehow improper.

To quote the 2020 Ron DeSantis on this subject:

“These people did their jobs, they’ve been smeared as the Gestapo for doing their jobs.

“What were they supposed to do, just ignore it? Of course not … They were serving valid process in accordance with the laws and Constitution of the United States and the state of Florida.

“They did it with integrity, they did it with honor and to say it’s a “raid” is disinformation, and you guys need to look at facts and stop trying to feed narratives.”

And talk about “feeding narratives”, the gratuitous Hunter Biden reference from DeSantis is pathetic. And calling the Biden Administration “the regime” fails to take into account a popular vote count of 81 million Americans and an Electoral College 74-vote victory margin.

“Regimes” take power when they lose elections, not win them.

And to wildly claim that IRS agents are being hired to “wield against adversaries” is another bit of irresponsible narrative-feeding on his part.

From 2010 to 2018, about a third of IRS auditors were trimmed, bringing the agency to staffing levels it had in 1953.

During the Trump years, households with incomes under $25,000 were audited at a higher rate (0.69 percent) than those with incomes up to $500,000 (0.53 percent), according to IRS data reported by The Washington Post.

Charles Rettig, a Trump-appointed IRS Commissioner, told Congress that the depleted agency didn’t conduct more high-income audits “because of employee experience and skill set.”

So IRS agents are being hired to address the estimated $18 billion in taxes lost due to a lack of auditors, and to collect more taxes from those individuals and corporations at the top end of the income scale that have found it easy to avoid paying.

Quit feeding political narratives, Ron DeSantis.

To quote your 2020 self: “I understand why you do it but it’s not supported by facts, so you should be better than that.”

Frank Cerabino is a columnist at the Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach him at fcerabino@gannett.com. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: DeSantis, ignores Rebekah Jones case, feeds Mar-a-Lago misinformation