FLORIDA — A conversation meant to focus on mental health efforts in the state came to a heated end with Gov. Ron DeSantis on Friday.

What You Need To Know

  • Mental health roundtable ended in heated discussion about raid on Rebekah Jones' home

  • Jones was fired in May after raising concerns about Florida's COVID-19 data

  • Gov. DeSantis had previously said he did not know about the house raid

The knee-jerk reaction comes after police stormed the home of COVID-19 data curator Rebekah Jones on Tuesday.

“These people did their jobs, they smeared as the Gustapo for doing their jobs. They did a search warrant. Why did they do a search warrant on the house? Because her IP address was linked to the felony," DeSantis said. "What were they supposed to do? Just ignore it? Of course not, they went, they followed protocol."

Jones was fired from her job in May after raising questions about Florida’s COVID-19 data.

In November, a message was sent to 1,700 employees through the Department of Health Ready Op system, urging people to speak up “before another 17,000 people are dead.”

According to FDLE, that message was linked to the IP address coming from Jones’ home, prompting the search.

“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," DeSantis said. "They did it with integrity, they did it with honor."

Jones maintains her innocence, saying she is not a hacker and that the message did not come from her.

She took to Twitter this morning, accusing DeSantis of lying about his knowledge of the search.

When questioned at the roundtable, the governor got heated before putting an end to the discussion.

“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. Thanks everybody,” he said, before getting up to leave.

In her Twitter response this morning, Jones added she’s needed to change her cell phone number after she says police seized her phone and publicly released her phone number.​