Rebekah Jones Hoping To Unseat Alleged 'Child Sex Trafficker' Matt Gaetz From Congress

Former Florida Department of Health data scientist Rebekah Jones has said she is planning on running for Congress against Rep. Matt Gaetz to get the alleged "child sex trafficker out of office."

Jones announced in an Instagram video on Tuesday she is hoping to unseat Republican Gaetz, who is under investigation but has not been charged over allegations he had sex with a 17-year-old girl whom he paid to travel across states lines.

"One of the reasons I held off about making any final decisions about running for office was I hoped that the criminal justice system would remove Matt Gaetz from Congress on its own," Jones said.

"That is taking a very long time and none of it is certain, especially as the rich and powerful play by their own rules.

"I had hoped that someone in the Republican Party would step up and primary him, and I've yet to see that happen," Jones added. "And so, if it takes me going home to Florida to run against Matt Gaetz, then I will do it."

In a statement to Newsweek, a spokesperson for Gaetz said: "Marylander Rebekah Jones is a hyper-lockdown, triple masker who Gov Desantis called 'the Typhoid Mary of COVID disinformation.' She won't be Northwest Florida's choice for Congress."

Speaking to WPTV reporter Forrest Saunders, Jones used her announcement to take another swipe at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who she claimed fired her because she refused to manipulate COVID-19 data to make the state's outbreak seem less severe.

"In suggesting a run Florida, I was pointing out the hypocrisy in DeSantis writing a law to prevent the silencing of government critics, while simultaneously celebrating my suspension for sharing a news article that exposed the lies he made that cost so many Florida lives."

In a statement last May to the The Miami Herald, DeSantis' communications director, Helen Aguirre Ferré, said Jones was fired after she exhibited a "repeated course of insubordination" during her time with the department, including her "unilateral decisions to modify the department's COVID-19 dashboard without input or approval from the epidemiological team or her supervisors."

Since then, the pair had frequently clashed, which escalated after her home was raided by the FBI in December.

On June 7, DeSantis' office issued a statement praising Twitter's decision to suspect Jones' account.

"This decision was long overdue. Rebekah Jones is the Typhoid Mary of COVID-19 disinformation and has harmed many hardworking DOH employees with her defamatory conspiracy theories.

"I hope someone will ask Ms. Jones why she thinks she got suspended: will she allege that Governor DeSantis is somehow behind Twitter's decision? That would be deeply ironic if she tried to spin that falsehood into her conspiracy theory, given the Governor's stance on Big Tech," he said.

The Washington Post noted that DeSantis' office praised Jones having her social media account suspended after he recently signed legislation that seeks to punish social media companies like Twitter for moderating user content.

In a statement to the National Review, a Twitter spokesperson said Jones' account was permanently suspended for violations of the Twitter rules on spam and platform manipulation.

DeSantis' press secretary Christina Pushaw added on Twitter: "Rebekah Jones was NOT 'censored' by Twitter for anything she posted. She was suspended because she broke a clear rule against buying followers (platform manipulation) and—all evidence points to this—hijacking the accounts of unsuspecting users to make them follow her."