On August 8, 2022, a Republican state legislator received a disturbing string of early-morning text messages from a former colleague, Jay Jones, this year’s Democratic nominee for Virginia attorney general.
Jones, who at the time had recently resigned from the state house after a brief stint representing Norfolk, had strong feelings about how the political class was eulogizing recently deceased former state legislator Joe Johnson Jr., a moderate Democrat with a long tenure in Virginia politics. Republican legislators like House Speaker Todd Gilbert had begun making public statements honoring Johnson’s memory and political legacy, and some of those statements were making the rounds in state legislative group chats.
Around 8 a.m., Jones shared those feelings with his former state legislative colleague, Republican House Delegate Carrie Coyner. In a series of text messages obtained by National Review, Jones derided Johnson’s political centrism and scoffed at the “glowing” tributes that were being made in his honor by Republicans in the wake of his death.
“Damn that was for mark,” he wrote to Coyner, suggesting he’d meant to send the texts to someone else. And yet that realization didn’t stop Jones from joking about what “that POS” Gilbert “would say about me if I died.”
Then, the conversation took a dark turn.
“If those guys die before me,” Jones wrote, referencing the Republican colleagues who were publicly honoring the deceased Johnson’s memory, “I will go to their funerals to piss on their graves” to “send them out awash in something.”
Jones then suggested that, presented with a hypothetical situation in which he had only two bullets and was faced with the choice of murdering then-Speaker of the House Todd Gilbert or two dictators, he’d shoot Gilbert “every time,” prompting pushback from his former colleague:
Jones: Three people, two bullets
Gilbert, hitler, and pol pot
Gilbert gets two bullets to the head
Spoiler: put Gilbert in the crew with the two worst people you know and he receives both bullets every time
Coyner: Jay
Please stop
Jones: Lol
Ok, ok
Coyner: It really bothers me when you talk about hurting people or wishing death on them
It isn’t ok
No matter who they are
The private messages offer a disturbing glimpse into how Jones — who is looking to oust incumbent Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares this fall — describes his political adversaries in private conversations. The violent rhetoric complicates an already contentious and competitive race roughly a month out from Election Day in Virginia, where early voting began on September 19.
Asked about the years-old text exchange, Coyner condemned Jones’s rhetoric and said she sent screenshots of the conversation to Gilbert that day. She said she and Jones haven’t spoken since, aside from a brief conversation about policy issues. “On August 8, 2022 I had a text conversation with Jay Jones, what he said was not just disturbing but disqualifying for anyone who wants to seek public office,” she told NR in a statement. “Jay Jones wished violence on the children of a colleague and joked about shooting Todd Gilbert. It’s disgusting and unbecoming of any public official.”
Jones and his campaign spokesperson did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Gilbert also did not respond to a request for comment. The Miyares campaign declined to comment.
Following publication, another outlet published a reaction from the Jones campaign. “Like all people, I’ve sent text messages that I regret and I believe that violent rhetoric has no place in our politics,” he said, after his campaign ignored repeated requests for comment from NR. “Let’s be clear about what is happening in the Attorney General race right now: Jason Miyares is dropping smears through Trump-controlled media organizations to assault my character and rescue his desperate campaign. This is a strategy that ensures Jason Miyares will continue to be accountable to Donald Trump, not the people of Virginia. This race is about whether Trump can control Virginia or Virginians control Virginia.”
‘Breeding Little Fascists’
Coyner’s alarm at her former colleague’s violent rhetoric toward Gilbert prompted Jones to call her and explain his reasoning over the phone, a source familiar with the exchange told NR.
According to the source, the Democratic former legislator doubled down on the call, saying the only way public policy changes is when policymakers feel pain themselves, like the pain that parents feel when they watch their children die from gun violence. He asked her to provide counterexamples to disprove his claim.
Then at one point, the source said, he suggested he wished Gilbert’s wife could watch her own child die in her arms so that Gilbert might reconsider his political views, prompting Coyner to hang up the phone in disgust.
Afterward, Jones continued his barrage of text messages, saying he was just asking questions. Coyner dismissed his excuse via text and chastised Jones for “hopping [sic] Jennifer Gilbert’s children would die.”
Rather than deny that he had wished death on the children, Jones responded by saying, “Yes, I’ve told you this before. Only when people feel pain personally do they move on policy.”
Faced with more pushback from his frazzled former colleague, Jones somehow took the conversation a step further: “I mean do I think Todd and Jennifer are evil? And that they’re breeding little fascists? Yes,” he wrote, referring to Gilbert’s wife and two young children.
The text revelations from 2022 come amid a turbulent campaign cycle in Virginia politics. As National Review reported this summer, the Virginia GOP ticket was rocked by explicit photo allegations involving Republican lieutenant gubernatorial nominee John Reid, which he denies. After a rocky summer, the Republican ticket has spent recent weeks projecting a more unified message and hitting the Democratic ticket on transgender-related policies involving women’s sports and bathrooms.
And in this final stretch of the campaign, the 36-year-old Jones now faces a slew of other controversies relating to his criminal history, state legislative record, and professional experience.
A Richmond Times-Dispatch investigation published this week found that in 2022, Jones was convicted in a reckless driving case after he was pulled over driving 116 miles per hour on Interstate 64, 46 miles per hour above the speed limit. His punishment: a $1,500 fine and 1,000 community service hours, 500 of which he spent working for his own political action committee, a remarkably convenient sentence for a crime that can land convicts in jail for up to a year.
The young attorney general nominee has also faced criticism for his lack of prosecutorial experience in his bid to become the commonwealth’s highest-ranking law enforcement officer, as well as his progressive state legislative record that Republicans pan as being “soft on crime.” And he’s come under fire for exaggerating his legal accomplishments, including the role he played in the District of Columbia’s successful 2022 legal victory against a so-called “ghost gun” manufacturer.
Editor’s Note: This article has been updated with a statement from Jay Jones, which he provided to another outlet after publication.