Okay, so let’s start with something basic. The default is that you try to leave the family of politicians and other public figures alone and leave them out of the news—unless something happens to make them validly part of the news. This is true whether you like the politician or not. Like I am not going to be head of Barack Obama’s fan club anytime soon, but I have never gone after Michelle Obama. I have even told people on my side to leave her alone. The day might come when Mrs. Obama enters politics and makes herself fair game (there are rumors she is thinking about it), but in my opinion that hasn’t happened, yet.
But on the other hand, I have never hesitated to criticize Hillary Clinton, even when she was only the First Lady, because she always sold herself as co-president to Bill Clinton. By saying that, she made herself fair game.
On the third hand, I defended Bristol Palin from the people attacking her for getting pregnant out of wedlock. She did nothing to make herself fair game. Frankly, I will never forgive Wonderful Pistachios for making an ad with her baby daddy (who was only famous because he knocked up a teenager), where the ad made light of his asinine conduct. It takes a lot to get on my personal boycott list, but they are on it.
On the fourth (?) hand, Hunter Biden is a valid target of stories not because having a drug addled screw up of a son reflects on his father. I am old enough to recognize that many good fathers have rotten kids and many good kids have terrible fathers. No, he is a valid target for two reasons. First, it is pretty clear that at times he has been protected from prosecution, which raises the valid question of whether his father is intervening to protect him or if some other kind of corruption is protecting him. Second, while it cannot be absolutely proven, everyone who is at all worldly knows what is going on with the sweetheart financial deals Hunter Biden has been getting. It is pretty clear that Hunter Biden is being used as a conduit to attempt to buy favors and influence from his father. Both of these are valid reasons for coverage, even if the mainstream media is trying to avoid the story, anyway.
So, we turn to Rebekah Jones’ son, which we know only as J.J., a minor. He was charged several months back with basically threatening to shoot up a school.
Recommended
If the only story was that he was arrested/charged/etc. for allegedly threatening a mass shooting at school, I don’t think we ever would haver covered it. There are kids arrested on similar charges all the time and we almost never cover those stories. The fact he is her son, alone, is not a reason to cover it.
But Rebekah Jones made this a story by claiming that her son was arrested purely because of politics. She basically accused Governor DeSantis of kidnapping. She dragged her son into the spotlight with this nonsense. Go back and read our prior coverage, and you will see that the story isn’t the fact he was charged but her crazy reaction to it on Twitter/X.
Here’s (some of) what she said at the time:
A week after we filed our lawsuit against the state, a kid claiming to be the cousin of one of my son's classmates joined their snapchat group. They recorded their conversations, and anonymously reported my son to police for sharing a popular internet meme.
— Rebekah Jones (@GeoRebekah) April 6, 2023
Two weeks later, bringing us to earlier today, an officer told me the state issued a warrant for my son's arrest for "digital threats of terrorism."
— Rebekah Jones (@GeoRebekah) April 6, 2023
I asked on whose orders. The officer said it was the state.
They aren't letting him come home tonight. They kidnapped my son.
I'm sorry for not getting back to everyone who is frantically calling and messaging me. I'm trying to keep it together and stay here and fight for my kid.
— Rebekah Jones (@GeoRebekah) April 6, 2023
This state has already gotten away with pointing guns at my son during their raid. I will not let them hurt him again.
I am begging as a mother and an American for the @CivilRights @TheJusticeDept to stop this.
— Rebekah Jones (@GeoRebekah) April 6, 2023
My son has paid an already heavy price for his mom being a legally-protected whistleblower. @POTUS@JoeBiden@FLOTUS @VP @marceelias @AttorneyCrump
— Rebekah Jones (@GeoRebekah) April 7, 2023
We could go on, but the point I am making is that all of these takes have aged like milk left out in the hot Texas sun given today’s news:
Rebekah Jones' teen son pleads no contest to threatening Navarre school shooting, stabbing https://t.co/3OpAQGPAel
— PNJ (@pnj) December 15, 2023
From the article:
The 13-year-old son of fired state of Florida employee and former Congressional candidate Rebekah Jones appeared in court Friday where he pleaded no contest to threatening to shoot up Holley Navarre Middle School.
The prosecutor on her son's case confirmed to the News Journal that the Office of the State Attorney charged the boy, who will be called J.J., under Florida Statute 836.10, a statute outlawing written or electronic threats to kill, do bodily injury, or conduct a mass shooting or an act of terrorism.
We looked it up, and that statute makes it a felony. That will be important later.
The News Journal is not naming Rebekah Jones' son since he has not been charged as an adult and remains in juvenile court, but is including his relationship to his mother because Jones has been vocal about her son's case.
If I can break in, they are explaining to the reader pretty much what I just said: They don’t want to tell you this much about her child or even to specifically identify the child to anyone, but Rebekah Jones has made the case more newsworthy than it normally would be. We suspect that as a local outlet that they might normally have covered the story as ‘local teen arrested for threat of mass shooting’ without identifying the child or even telling readers who his mother is if his mother didn’t essentially accuse Ron DeSantis of retaliating against her through her son. Now anyone who knows the family pretty much knows what this kid did, when normally the kid would be able to enjoy some privacy.
The article goes on:
The statute says it is ‘unlawful for any person to send, post, or transmit, or procure the sending, posting, or transmission of, a writing or other record, including an electronic record, in any manner in which it may be viewed by another person, when in such writing or record the person makes a threat to’ kill or do bodily harm or conduct a mass shooting or act of terrorism.
After J.J. opted out of a jury trial by pleading no contest to the charge, both the prosecutor and defense attorney said they plan to reach an agreement that would include probation for a yet-to-be-determined amount of time. They also said the judge would withhold adjudication of guilt.
Typically, a person can back out of a plea of guilty or no contest right up until sentencing. But certainly if Mrs. Jones really thinks her son was framed or some nonsense like that, at this point they don’t seem to think they can actually prove it.
The same report says that J.J. has been ordered to undergo a psychological evaluation which is pretty standard in a situation like this. In the article, Mrs. Jones also says that he is seeing a shrink, and we genuinely hope that something in this process fixes whatever is going wrong, and J.J. comes out of this as a solid, law-abiding citizen.
We won’t include a lot of reactions, but I felt this was valid analysis that appropriately focuses on the mother:
This is how Jones gets away with what she gets away with: when her son was arrested and she claimed he was "kidnapped," the news and social media were ablaze with discussion. Now that he pleaded no contest to what he was arrested for, there is nary a blip on it anywhere. https://t.co/REkCPfVU3K
— Damin Toell (@damintoell) December 15, 2023
Of course, this doesn’t seem to have helped her son in any material way, so he doesn’t seem to have gotten away with anything. In fact, her antics has led to pretty much everyone who knows the family knowing about the case. But, hey, maybe she will take this as an opportunity for reflection, to realize …
As a parent, I’ve been living in a nightmare the last eight months.
— Rebekah Jones (@GeoRebekah) December 15, 2023
A week after filing my whistleblower lawsuit against the state, police came to my home to ask my son about memes he sent to his friends on snapchat.
I recorded the interactions on my home security cameras. The…
Ah, crap. She’s apparently learned nothing. The entire message reads:
As a parent, I’ve been living in a nightmare the last eight months.
A week after filing my whistleblower lawsuit against the state, police came to my home to ask my son about memes he sent to his friends on snapchat.
I recorded the interactions on my home security cameras. The police said it sounded like ‘teenager stuff’ and weren’t concerned.
Then the state intervened. They decided to charge my son with felony threats of terrorism, claiming the memes were tantamount to threatening to shoot up his school (he was enrolled in virtual school).
Okay, time to break in for a moment. What it actually sounds like is that the police started off doing a ‘good cop’ routine in order to lull everyone into a false sense of safety in order to get them to speak freely and incriminate J.J. then when they felt they had all the evidence they needed, the brought the hammer down.
You see, as a practical matter, it is often very hard to prove someone said something on the Internet in court. Let’s say, for instance, some kid writes on Twitter/X that they plan to shoot up a school. Maybe he calls himself @LadiesMan420and69, to make up a (lame) handle, and his name, John Smith, is on the account. So, they go to trial and the prosecution tries to introduce the relevant posts, but the judge stops the prosecution and says ‘how do we know he wrote those posts? Anyone could have written those posts. Spider-Man could have written those posts, as far as I know.’
Prosecutor: But his name is on it.
Judge: Anyone could have put his name on it.
And it could go on like that. For instance, if the prosecution could prove it was definitely sent from his computer, the judge would ask how they know he typed it—for all the judge knew, someone else in the home might have used the computer.
And the key thing is if that if the prosecutor can’t adequately answer those concerns, then none of the posts on Twitter/X will come into evidence. If it’s in front of a jury, the jury will never see it. If it’s a bench trial, the judge will put it out of his mind.
And what is the easiest way to get around that problem? Get the person to admit to writing it. But at the trial, it is often too late. Especially in a criminal case, there is a good chance the defendant will have a lawyer who will correctly tell him to invoke his Fifth Amendment right to refuse to testify. And that means the government might not be able to prove he wrote it even if everyone knows he probably did.
But early on in the investigation, when he doesn’t realize how much trouble he might be in? He might sing like a canary. ‘Yeah, I said wrote that, but it was just a joke, see?’ A lawyer might tell him to shut up, but what if he doesn’t think to bring in a lawyer? What if he thinks the cops are his pals, and he just needs to clear up a misunderstanding?
So, just based on my own experience and what she said, it sounds like they got rolled by the cops.
Back to her crazypants statement (and I am not going to fact check everything):
DeSantis’ press offices - both the Executive Office of Governor and his campaign– received exclusive access to my son’s records, which they leaked through their online surrogates.
For months, they’ve harassed us, stalked us, lied about us, pushed conspiracy theories, and used the power of the Office of the Governor to retaliate against my son.
Except she is the one pushing a conspiracy theory—and I see no proof.
Since I have whistleblower protection, the state can’t touch me. That protection doesn’t extend to my family.
Being a whistleblower does not protect you if you threaten to shoot up a school. So she is suggesting that if she did what her son pled no contest to, that she couldn't be arrested, tried or convicted. That is simply wrong.
It’s a violation of law for Jeremy Redfern and Taryn Fenske to take any retaliatory action against me, as they’re both employees of the state. They don’t care, and have continued to retaliate against me for years despite the legal risks.
The state tried and failed to go after me. Within months of failing to throw me in jail, and a week after filing our lawsuit against them, they went after my 13-year-old son.
On Tuesday, I feared the worst. After negotiating a plea to misdemeanor ‘disturbing the peace’ for sharing the memes, higher-ups stepped in and said they wanted to go to trial Friday.
That’s not what the Pensacola News Journal (PNJ) is saying. They are saying he pled guilty to a felony.
I called everyone I knew, posted widely, and called out for help.
Today, thanks to the @fljusticecenter and everyone who voiced their outrage, my son is free and walks away with no conviction and no guilty plea.
Except PNJ indicated that the judge has not found guilt yet, meaning he will probably do so later. The reporting is not even clear that he won’t serve any time (though it sounds like he won’t).
This week has been traumatic for all of us.
My son is finally safe, and free from retaliation by Florida. He will never have to step foot in that state again.
Since he still has to be sentenced, that seems unlikely. It’s not impossible to be sentenced remotely, but it’s not what most judges do these days.
But that doesn't mean his pain has stopped. Nothing can undo what they've done to him or the rest of my family.
There is no justice in America if what happened to me and my family goes unpunished.
With his permission, I wanted to share some of the messages I found in his snapchat during this ordeal.
I want people to know the impact these people have had on my child, who was just 10 years old when this started in 2020.
‘I've had every waking moment be filled with an indescribable feeling of hatred, dread and agony. I used to sleep on my parents bedroom floor for months bc of trauma and thinking I was going to die. Sometimes nothing helps.’
He spoke often about his depression, feeling suicidal, being afraid and traumatized because of the raid DeSantis ordered on our home in December 2020, because of the death threats authorities never prosecuted, because of the grown man following, photographing and bullying him online (who Matt Gaetz later hired and helped get citizenship).
He had nightmares that terrified him so much he would set an alarm to wake up once an hour to keep him from dreaming.
He often lamented that we still lived in Florida, and how he dreamed about moving up north where it would be safe.
He said he had, ‘a constant feeling of emptiness and dread.’
It breaks my heart to know my son wanted to die because of what these people did to him. I can’t describe the pain in reading some of these messages. I knew my son was hurting, but I didn’t know how badly.
We’ve kept so much of our suffering private in a failed effort to protect our family.
Yeah, you’ve been very private, lady.
Everyone should know what these people are capable of, what they’re willing to do to young children, and how dangerous they are.
They are monsters.
She also quote tweeted her own post and wrote: ‘Next steps: Sue every one of these sick psycopaths for everything they have.’
So… yeah, she has learned nothing. Who knows if she will make good on those lawsuit threats, but we do predict they will fail.
And the most foolish thing about this new post on Twitter/X is that, if it gets back to prosecutors or the judge, it could blow up the deal. Prosecutors and Judges like to see a defendant who is sorry, and she has cast serious doubt on whether or not he is. Yes, a plea of no contest is technically not an admission of guilt, but they will consider him guilty and expect contrition.
Again, I hope for the best outcome for this child. He still has a long life ahead of him and I like redemption stories. But for the good of her son, Mrs. Jones should probably change her trajectory.
