Virginia Dem AG Candidate Confronted After Messages About Shooting GOP Speaker Surface

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Democrat candidate for Virginia attorney general Jay Jones was pressed in a televised interview about private messages he sent in 2022 that entertained shooting former Virginia House Speaker Todd Gilbert and allegedly wished death upon Gilbert’s children.

Jones faced questions from ABC 8News reporter Tyler Englander, who asked how Virginia could “trust a man who said something so horrific.”

Englander’s interview followed a National Review report that published details from “text messages” Jones sent to Virginia House Delegate Carrie Coyner (R).

According to the outlet, Jones complained to Coyner that colleagues were “eulogizing” a recently deceased Democrat lawmaker and discussed a hypothetical involving Gilbert.

National Review reported that the messages showed Jones saying that, if faced “with a hypothetical situation in which he had only two bullets” and had to choose between shooting Gilbert or “two dictators,” he would pick Gilbert.

The outlet also quoted additional messages from Jones about deceased colleagues: “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 added that, in the firearm hypothetical, he would choose Gilbert “every time.”

Englander asked Jones directly about trust and the reported messages.

“A lot of politics is about trust,” Englander said.


“I can think of nothing more horrific than a mother having to hold her dying child. How can Virginians trust a man who said something so horrific, so callously?” Jones responded with an apology.

“Well again, I am so deeply, deeply, sorry, for what I said, and I wish that it hadn’t happened and I would take it back if I could,” he said.


When asked what he had been thinking when he sent the messages about Gilbert, Jones said he “sincerely, and from the bottom” of his heart wanted to express his “remorse and regret” over his words.

Coyner confirmed to the Washington Post that she had a text exchange with Jones in which he made comments about Republicans on the House floor eulogizing Joseph Johnson Jr., a longtime Democratic state lawmaker from southwest Virginia who often voted with the GOP and had died three days earlier.

Coyner condemned the texts in a statement reported by the Post.

“What he said was not just disturbing but disqualifying for another who wants to seek public office,” her statement said.

Mike Young, a spokesman for Coyner’s reelection, told the Post that Jones called Coyner to explain his reasoning after the initial exchange, and that the texts continued after the call.

Young said Coyner’s further texts suggested that Jones had also talked about Gilbert’s children dying in the arms of their mother, Jennifer.

The Post reported that detail as Coyner’s description of the exchange; the private messages themselves were not published in full.

Jones issued a separate statement addressing the National Review report and the text messages.

“I take full responsibility for my actions, and I want to issue my deepest apology to Speaker Gilbert and his family,” Jones said, in a statement shared by Nick Minock, a reporter for ABC 7 WJLA-TV.

“Reading back those words made me sick to my stomach. I am embarrassed, ashamed, and sorry.”

The fallout drew responses from Virginia leaders. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) called the reported rhetoric unacceptable.

“This violent, disgusting rhetoric targeted at an elected official and his children is beyond disqualifying,” Youngkin wrote in a post on X.

“Jay Jones said ‘Gilbert gets two bullets to the head’ and then hoped his children would die. Read those words again. There is no ‘gosh, I’m sorry’ here. Jones doesn’t have the morality or character to drop out of this race, and his running mates Abigail Spanberger, Ghazala Hashmi, and every elected Democrat in Virginia doesn’t have the courage to call on him to step away from this campaign in disgrace.”

Lt. Gov. and Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Winsome Earle-Sears also criticized Democratic leaders.

“Jay Jones literally fantasized about killing a man and two children and Abigail Spanberger still doesn’t have the guts to tell him to drop out,” Earle-Sears wrote in a post on X.

Jones remained on the campaign trail while addressing questions about the messages and issuing repeated apologies.

In his ABC 8News interview, he declined to dispute the authenticity of the reported texts, instead returning to his apology and statements about remorse.

The ongoing questions to Jones have focused on the nature of the words attributed to him and on the standard of conduct for an attorney general candidate in Virginia.


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1 thought on “Virginia Dem AG Candidate Confronted After Messages About Shooting GOP Speaker Surface”

  1. PithyKat

    His ignorance and stupidity are glaringly apparent, who’d want him for ANY position ANYWHERE, particularly in politics where we already have too many ignoramuses to suffer under already?

    Reply

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