Leaked text messages have placed Democrat nominee for Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones under heavy scrutiny, with US President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance both urging him to withdraw from the race. The messages from 2022 show Jones writing that he would shoot then-House Speaker Todd Gilbert and that he wanted Gilbert’s wife to watch her children die.
‘It has just come out that the Radical Left Lunatic, Jay Jones, who is running against Jason Miyares, the GREAT Attorney General in Virginia, made SICK and DEMENTED jokes—if they were jokes at all, which they were not—which were not funny,’ Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social after the emergence of the messages. He added that ‘even Democrats are saying it is “RESIGNATION FROM CAMPAIGN” TERRITORY.’ Trump stressed that Jones should drop out of the race ‘immediately’ and formally endorsed Attorney General Jason Miyares.
The text messages, first published by National Review, reveal an August 2022 exchange between Jones and Republican delegate from Chesterfield Carrie Coyner. In the texts, Jones described a scenario in which Gilbert ‘gets two bullets to the head’, followed by a wish that the Republican lawmaker’s children ‘die in their mother’s arms’. Coyner confirmed the authenticity of the exchange in a statement on Friday, 3 October, calling the remarks ‘disgusting and unbecoming of any public official’.
‘On 8 August 2022, I had a text conversation with Jay Jones,’ Coyner said. ‘What he said was not just disturbing but disqualifying for anyone who wants to seek public office. Jay Jones wished violence on the children of a colleague and joked about shooting Todd Gilbert.’
In a statement Friday evening, Jones admitted sending the messages and said he takes ‘full responsibility’ for his actions. He apologized directly to Todd Gilbert and his family and vowed to work to regain Virginians’ trust.
The election is scheduled for 4 November, with polls indicating a tight race between Jones and Miyares. According to a Washington Post–Schar School poll published Friday, Jones led Miyares 51–45 among likely voters. An earlier survey by Christopher Newport University–Wason Center in September showed Jones ahead 48 per cent to 41, with 12 per cent undecided.
While several state Democrats condemned Jones, none of the party’s leaders have called on him to withdraw from the race—a move widely seen as the only responsible decision. The scandal comes as the country reels from a surge of political violence, following the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk on 10 September. In the weeks since, multiple mass shootings have shocked America, including the attack at a Mormon church in Michigan that left four dead and several others injured.
On Sunday, Miyares condemned Jones, noting that the attorney general is the chief law enforcement officer of Virginia and must embody integrity. ‘This conduct is disqualifying,’ he underlined. Miyares added that he had ‘sat with crying victims’ of violent crime as a prosecutor and called Jones’s comments ‘the kind of darkness that disqualifies anyone from holding public office.’
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