After wishing death upon the former Virginia speaker of the House and his family, which was proven in text messages, Jones is now accused of suggesting police officers deserve to die, too. That alleged comment, which is separate from a text message about dead fascist children, was made during a political argument over qualified immunity for law enforcement.
Both the text exchange and the argument over police officers involve the same person, Republican Delegate Carrie Coyner, who shared the police story with news website Virginia Scope on Monday.
Jones, 36, is vowing to remain in the race even after disturbing text messages from 2022 show he wished death upon Todd Gilbert, who was the Virginia house speaker at the time. One text message said Gilbert would get “two bullets to the head” if Jones had to choose between shooting and killing the speaker, Adolf Hitler, and Pol Pot.
Party standing behind its death-wishing DemocratChris Woodward, AFN.net Democrats appear to be standing behind Jay Jones, their nominee for Virginia attorney general, despite his history of making disturbing, violent comments. Reacting to text messages in which Jones fantasized about the death of a former Speaker and his family, Washington Times columnist Robert Knight says his political career should be over. “There’s no coming back from this,” Knight tells AFN. “You can’t apologize for something like this and still be considered a viable candidate.” Knight made that comment before a Virginia delegate, Carrie Conyer, told the media Jones made similar comments about dead police officers in 2020. Even though prominent Democrats have condemned Jones, none of them have publicly called for him to step down from the race, however. Sen. Tim Kaine, who represents Virginia, told CNN the comments are “out of character” for Jones and said he is still supporting his candidacy. School-choice advocate Corey DeAngelis told AFN it’s “troubling” the Virginia Education Association has not withdrawn its endorsement of Jones. “This kind of rhetoric has no place in politics, and it certainly has no place in school,” DeAngelis said. |
Jones was sending text message back and forth with Coyner because he was angered by Gilbert’s “glowing” words for a Democrat lawmaker, Joe Johnson Jr., after his death. Jones was so annoyed by GOP tributes to Johnson he told Coyner he imagined himself urinating on their graves.
“It really bothers me when you talk about hurting people or wishing death on them,” Coyner texted back.
Those Conyer-Jones text messages from three years ago were first obtained by National Review Online.
In the new allegation, which Conyer says was a 2020 phone call, she alleges Jones was defending his bill that would strip law enforcement of qualified immunity. That legal status shields them from personal liability while performing their duties.
When the GOP delegate told Jones his bill could get police officers killed, she recalled he told her if a “few of them died,” they would stop shooting and killing people.
Jones so far is denying the police officer conversation took place. He also called the text message accusation a “smear” before flipping from denial to being "sick to my stomach" over his past words.
The dismissive tone of Jones’ alleged comments about police officers mirror a second alarming exchange with Conyer. According to Conyer, she and Jones argued over the phone about his previous Gilbert comments but the Democrat doubled down and disparaged Gilbert’s family, too. The speaker might reconsider his political views, Jones said, if his children died in his wife’s arms.
That conversation moved from a phone call to text messages, where Jones admitted he was hoping Jennifer Gilbert would hold her dying children in her arms.
“Yes, I’ve told you this before,” Jones texted Conyer. “Only when people feel pain personally do they move on policy.”
Jones then went on to call the Gilbert family (pictured above) evil.
“I mean do I think Todd and Jennifer are evil? And that they’re breeding little fascists? Yes,” he wrote.
