Jay Jones is completely unfit for office — period. This is a man running to be the top law enforcement official in Virginia, yet he’s the same guy who allegedly fantasized about his political rivals — and their families — being assassinated, and wished death upon police officers.
These aren’t rumors whispered in some political backroom — they’re serious allegations, backed by text messages that reveal a level of hatred and instability that has no place anywhere near public office.
In 2022, Jones — then a state lawmaker and now a candidate for Virginia attorney general — sent chilling text messages expressing a desire that Republican colleague Todd Gilbert and even Gilbert’s children be killed so that Gilbert would “change his mind” on gun policy. Jones later apologized, but this isn’t some trivial slip of the tongue. It’s political bloodlust, plain and simple.
Worse, those messages are part of a pattern. In 2020, Jones reportedly said that nothing would change on police reform — including the push to end qualified immunity — until people “feel personal pain,” a remark that’s been read by many as endorsing harm to officers. Put together, the Gilbert texts and the 2020 comments paint the picture of a man who traffics in threats and seems willing to celebrate real-world suffering for political ends:
Del. Carrie Coyner, R-Chesterfield, sat down with Virginia Scope on Monday morning to discuss the controversy surrounding text messages sent to her in 2022 by Virginia’s Democratic attorney general nominee Jay Jones. In the conversation with Virginia Scope, Coyner talked about what actions she took when she received the texts and why it took years for them to become public. She also discussed previous conversations with Jones in which she said that he told her in 2020 that if a few police officers died, then maybe they would stop killing people. Jones denies he said this.
When asked what Jones was referencing when he said “I’ve told you this before,” Coyner said it goes back to a heated phone call in 2020 about removing qualified immunity protections for law enforcement. (Qualified immunity protects police officers from civil lawsuits.)
Coyner said Monday morning: “We had a pretty heated conversation about public policy and pain involving qualified immunity. I served on the Courts Committee for a short period of time. A bill to remove qualified immunity for police officers, which protects police officers from personal liability in their line of duty and their line of work, and he believed that they should not have qualified immunity, and he was trying to convince me to agree with that, and I said, ‘No, police officers have to make a split second decision about whether or not to shoot a gun to protect themselves or protect others. And if they’re having to think about, will this strip my whole family of everything … are they going to be able to make that split-second decision?’
And I said, ‘I believe that people will get killed. Police officers will get killed.’ And he said, ‘Well, maybe if a few of them died, that they would move on, not shooting people, not killing people.’ And I said, ‘that’s insane.’ But he firmly believed that if you removed qualified immunity, that police officers would act differently, and I firmly believe that it would not result in good public policy, and it would put police officers and the public’s lives at risk if they have to second-guess themselves on a decision they’re making in a moment where someone is doing something violent.”
Jones was a sponsor of legislation to remove qualified immunity when he was a member of the House of Delegates.
This guy is not qualified to be an attorney general. Clearly. Or anywhere near an elected office. He does, however, need some psychiatric help.
This dude has already lost left-wing MSNBC. He needs to drop out. Now. What a disgrace.
