The release of a threatening voice message sent to Rebekah Jones has drawn her opponents, many asserting the attack is only a publicity hunt.
One, who redacted his/her name, posted on social media that the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s office has no report filed by Rebekah Jones – a reader posted the message on the comments under the original 8/1 blog post.
Jones responded to the criticism on WCOA this morning, saying she filed her reported with the FBI, not the Okaloosa Sheriff’s Department. “The Okaloosa Sheriff’s Department the FBI contacted to try to help them confirm the identity of the person who sent it, which shouldn’t have been too difficult considering that he didn’t even block his number.”
Jones continued, “And that was the extent of their role, so the FBI is handling it. It’s been a week and a half, and I last spoke to the agent who’s in charge of Fort Walton Beach yesterday, and they still have not arrested this person yet.”
The Democratic candidate for Congress shared that she has had several death threats since she spoke out against Gov. Ron DeSantis during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, she felt this recent threat was more serious because the caller didn’t attempt to hide his phone number, continued the harassment over three days and included her family in the death threat.
“This is the first time I felt like I had to go to the FBI,” Jones said. “Normally, it’s just I get something to the local police. That’s about as far as I’ve had to take it, and that was only a handful of times. So this is the first time I’ve been like we need to call the FBI, and that’s a scary thing to do.”
I asked her to walk-through how she reported the incidents.
“So it happened Thursday, I think it was the 21st or 22nd. That afternoon, I submitted the information to the FBI,” Jones said.”They, not long after, got in touch with me. That weekend, they tried to make contact with this person several times with no success. I’m still waiting for them to arrest this person.”
She did have a message for her critics: “Can you stop pretending like this stuff isn’t serious because it’s happening to me and you don’t like me? When Matt Gaetz got death threats last November, I publicly spoke out and said that’s not okay. No one who is in public service, or is Congress, or is a private citizen should have people calling them up, threatening him to kill them. It’s not okay.”
