A local Democrat Party in Virginia is slated to host a fundraiser featuring attorney general candidate Jay Jones after reported text messages and phone calls showed the Democrat fantasizing about assassinating a Republican lawmaker and wishing death on his children.
According to the event calendar on its website, the Stafford Democratic Committee (SDC) is scheduled to hold a “Defending Democracy” fundraiser in neighboring Fredericksburg, Virginia, on Friday, Oct. 17. The gathering — in which “[a]ttendees will be treated to a buffet dinner” — is expected to include three featured guests: U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., Rep. Eugene Vindman, D-Va., and Jones.
The event post includes an RSVP link that takes users to a donations page hosted by ActBlue, a Democrat-aligned fundraising platform currently under investigation by Congress and the Trump administration over allegations related to illegal “straw” donations and foreign contributions in U.S. elections.
“Our democracy is under attack and the more that Trump chips away at our rights and freedoms at the national level, the more emboldened others will become at the state and local levels. The Stafford Democratic Committee supports candidates and causes that will prevent those threats from becoming a reality here in Stafford,” reads an excerpt on the SDC’s ActBlue donations page for the event.
The SDC also posted a flyer for the scheduled event on its Facebook page earlier this month, which includes a QR code that takes users to the aforementioned donations page. The document also boasts a statement that reads, “The Stafford Democrats invite you out for a night of music, movement, and solidarity.”
The event flyer was posted to the SDC’s Facebook page hours before National Review reported a series of 2022 text messages sent by Jones to a GOP state lawmaker, in which he fantasized about killing then-state House Speaker Todd Gilbert, a Republican. As The Federalist’s Breccan Thies summarized, “Jones … presented a hypothetical … where he had only two bullets and three options to kill people: violent Cambodian dictator Pol Pot, responsible for millions of deaths; Adolf Hitler, another violent dictator responsible for millions of deaths; or Gilbert, a Republican who served in the state House for nearly 20 years.”
“Gilbert gets two bullets to the head,” Jones wrote in the text messages. “Spoiler: put Gilbert in the crew with the two worst people you know and he receives both bullets every time.”
Hellbound and Down 