Virginia Democrat attorney general candidate Jay Jones reportedly entertained thoughts over text message, about shooting a former Republican Virginia House Speaker in 2022.
Text messages the National Review obtained showed that Jones reportedly sent messages to Virginia House Delegate Carrie Coyner (R) on August 8, 2022 complaining about how his colleagues were “eulogizing” a former Democrat member of the Virginia House of Delegates, who had died.
In the text messages, Jones reportedly “shared” his thoughts with Coyner, and went on to admit that his message had been for another person. In the messages, Jones went on to complain about his Republican colleagues and entertained thoughts of shooting former Virginia Speaker of the House of Delegates Todd Gilbert:
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.”
Jones reportedly went on to ponder about, if his Republican colleagues died before him, would he “go to their funerals to piss on their graves,” according to the outlet.
Jones also reportedly pondered about how, if he were faced with a “hypothetical situation in which he had only two bullets and was faced with the choice of murdering” either Gilbert or “two dictators,” he would pick Gilbert to shoot.
According to the text messages obtained by the outlet, Coyner asked Jones to “stop” and expressed that it bothered her when he talked “about hurting people or wishing death on them.”
Hellbound and Down 