National Review’s Charles Cooke took a wrecking ball to “whistleblower” Rebekah Jones credibility back in May. Today he has a follow-up about another set of lies Jones has told involving Gov. DeSantis’ press secretary Christina Pushaw. Cooke wrote a longer piece about this part of the Jones saga back in May. Here’s a snippet of that:

Pushaw, Jones suggested, is “facing criminal charges” for having violated a restraining order that Jones had taken out against her. In support of this assertion, Jones posted a screenshot from the District Court of Maryland’s website that, she implied, confirms that something is awry.

As is typical, Jones’s many followers have taken this as gospel. But it’s not. In fact, it’s yet another falsehood. Moreover, it is perfectly emblematic of what Jones has done throughout her attempt to convince people that Florida is cooking the books, which is to claim serious wrongdoing by someone else that, upon closer examination, turns out to be serious wrongdoing of her own.

Jones did file a restraining order against Pushaw in the state of Maryland. She then immediately filed a subsequent complaint that Pushaw had violated that order. Only the original order hadn’t even been considered at that point. When it was considered the court dismissed it. That still left the follow-on complaints which, despite being premised on dismissed restraining order, were not immediately dismissed:

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.

But as Cooke reports, it wasn’t quite over. One of Jones’ fans got caught up in the story at the very end. A Substack blogger named Grant Stern announced yesterday that he had a big exclusive story coming out today about Christina Pushaw:

BIG story coming in the AM about the criminal charges against Florida Governor DeSantis' press secretary Christina Pushaw for cyberstalking whistleblower Rebekah Jones.

— Grant Stern is fully vaccinated (@grantstern) August 13, 2021

The story, which he revealed was entirely based on text messages with Rebekah Jones, claimed that Pushaw was “taking criminal plea deal for violating Rebekah Jones’ restraining order.” Here’s how his exclusive originally opened:

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ press secretary is set to enter into a plea agreement with the Montgomery County District Attorney’s office to resolve criminal charges of violating an interim peace order to stay away from whistleblower Rebekah Jones who is the victim of the crime.

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.

But again, none of that was true as he learned the hard way. Here’s the revised opening of his piece which is, shall we say, a slight adjustment from the original:

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ press secretary is set to end her involvement with the Montgomery State’s Attorney’s office, who filed a nolle prosequi on criminal charges of violating an interim peace order to stay away from whistleblower Rebekah Jones who was the victim of the alleged crime.

“The office declined to prosecute on insufficient evidence due to underlying order dismissal,” said Montgomery State’s Attorney’s Office Director of Public Affairs Lauren DeMarco by phone. “It’s not in the case search now because it was nolle’d [dismissed], but I don’t know who took it out and why.”

A little further on in the revised piece we get to the really good part. Coming from someone who was clearly eager to believe Jones’ side of the story this is just brutal: [emphasis added]

According to text messages with Jones about the matter, Pushaw was set to enter into a deferred prosecution agreement at the hearing, but that was totally false.

“Tomorrow is just a status hearing for Pushaw. They are making a deal with her for deferred prosecution,” said the whistleblower falsely, who claimed [she] learned of an agreement that didn’t take place in a phone call she could not confirm. “This is something that the state attorney’s representative told me,” she said falsely.

I’m starting to see a pattern here with whistleblower Rebekah Jones. Other people have seen it too which is why she’s not garnering as much press as she used to and, hence, why she’s now texting Substack bloggers to get her claims out.

I wonder why Grant Stern didn’t just publish all of his texts with Jones? I’m sure he agreed not to do that up front but once you know everything she said was a lie, why stick to your agreement with her? Put it out there for posterity.