Rebekah Jones Invents a New Insane Lie about Ron DeSantis’s Press Secretary

Shorter @charlescwcooke: Rebekah Jones' latest lies about @ChristinaPushaw were just that, and @grantstern was either her useful idiot or her willing accomplice in peddling them. https://t.co/zj40xt6cH2

— Varad Mehta (@varadmehta) August 13, 2021

By CHARLES C. W. COOKE

A few months ago, I noted that Rebekah Jones had disgracefully and deliberately lied about Ron DeSantis’s press secretary, Christina Pushaw, having turned an administrative fracas that Jones herself manufactured into a public insinuation of serious wrongdoing. Today, I received official confirmation from the Montgomery County State’s Attorney’s Office that my initial reporting was correct. Those who have repeated Jones’s falsehoods — or continue to repeat those falsehoods — owe Pushaw a sincere apology.
 
In my initial post, I explained what Jones had done in detail. It’s a little complicated (so if you want a full understanding, click through), but the gist is that, angered by Pushaw writing a piece about her lies, Jones took out an interim restraining order against Pushaw in Maryland, and, before that order had even been reviewed by the courts, filed a second claim alleging that it had been violated. Because the grounds for the original order were utterly ridiculous, the court dismissed it for lack of evidence, but, for long and boring bureaucratic reasons, it didn’t dismiss the secondary claim — even though that claim had been rendered moot by the dismissal of the order on which it was based (and was set to drop off the docket the moment it was addressed). Aware that most people wouldn’t understand the minute details of all this, Rebekah Jones then spent months pretending that there was an open criminal charge against Pushaw — which, of course, there was not.
 
This morning, the District Court of Maryland nixed the secondary case — just as it was always going to — on the obvious grounds that Pushaw cannot have violated a restraining order that had been dismissed for lack of evidence (and, as it turns out, that she hadn’t even seen). And, at long last, the saga was over.
 

 
Or, at least, it would have been, had Jones not preempted the news by inventing a brand new lie. Writing on his personal blog this morning, a man named Grant Stern claimed that “according to text messages with Jones about the matter”:

Press secretary Christina Pushaw stands accused of criminally violating a Maryland court order to cease contact with former Florida Department of Health geographer, Jones who accused her of cyberstalking activities and impersonating a federal employee.
 
In response to repeated requests for comment, Pushaw lied and prevaricated to avoid admitting that she’s subject to serious criminal proceedings with a maximum penalty of 90-days in jail and a $1000 fine for the first offense.
 
The case is being heard this morning, August 13th, 2021 in a Montgomery County district court just northwest of America’s capital, Washington D.C.
 
According to text messages with Jones about the matter, Pushaw is set to enter into a deferred prosecution agreement at tomorrow’s hearing at 9 am.
 
“Tomorrow is just a status hearing for Pushaw. They are making a deal with her for deferred prosecution,” says the whistleblower, who learned of the proceeding in a phone call. “This is something that the state attorney’s representative told me.”

None of this is true. It’s a wild, absurd, defamatory fabrication.
 



 
But don’t take my word for it. This afternoon, I called Lauren DeMarco, the director of public affairs for the Montgomery County State’s Attorneys Office, and I asked her whether any of the claims made by Jones were true.
 
DeMarco’s answer: “None of them.”
 
I asked DeMarco whether Christina Pushaw had been accused by the state of Maryland of “criminally violating a Maryland court order” of any type. DeMarco confirmed that Christina Pushaw had not.

Read more