The end to a relatively placid off-year election cycle has been upended with the discovery of text messages from Virginia’s Democratic candidate for attorney general suggesting that killing police officers would lead to safer streets.

Jay Jones, already under siege this week for privately musing about killing Virginia’s Republican Speaker of the House and members of his family, let loose on the men and women in blue after muttering to a friend in 2022 about Speaker Todd Gilbert’s eulogy for a moderate Democrat.

Jones wrote a message to a colleague where he wondered what Gilbert — whom he referred to as “that POS” — would say about him if he died.

“Three people, two bullets. Gilbert, hitler, and pol pot. Gilbert gets two bullets to the head,” Jones texted.

The comments have overshadowed the final month of Virginia’s off-year elections, where Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) leads Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears in most polls in the race for governor. Spanberger has called Jones’s comments about Gilbert “disgusting” but stopped short of demanding he drop out of the race.

Her hesitance to throw Jones under the bus has Republicans seizing on newly discovered remarks that Jones allegedly made to a Republican colleague in 2020, who says he “told her in 2020 that if a few police officers died, then maybe they would stop killing people.”

“Back in 2022, I received a text message, and Jay had sent me the text message, and then he realized immediately it was meant for Mark, and he said sorry,” Republican Del. Carrie Coyner said in a statement to the Virginia Scope.

“And rather than stop, he continued on talking about Todd Gilbert, and in a way that made me uncomfortable with him — saying that Todd Gilbert should be shot — if he had two bullets, he would use both of them every time on Todd Gilbert, instead of some really monstrous, horrible people in history. I pushed back, and then he called to basically reiterate why Todd Gilbert was such a horrible person on public policy, and why he’s bad for people, and peppering me with questions about ‘name a time when people make actual change on public policy without feeling personal pain,’ and I wouldn’t agree with that.”

The heated text exchange included a suggestion by Jones that Jennifer Gilbert, the wife of Speaker Gilbert, would feel differently about supporting Second Amendment rights if one of their children were killed. After this, Jones and Coyner reportedly spoke about his position in a phone call.

“You were talking about [hoping] Jennifer Gilbert’s children would die,” Coyner said.

“Yes, I’ve told you this before. Only when people feel pain personally do they move on policy,” Jones responded.

Coyner told the outlet that Jones was referring to their previous conversation in 2020, where he suggested the murder of several police officers would pacify Black Lives Matter protestors.

“We had a pretty heated conversation about public policy and pain involving qualified immunity. I served on the Courts Committee for a short period of time,” Coyner said.

“A bill to remove qualified immunity for police officers, which protects police officers from personal liability in their line of duty and their line of work, and he believed that they should not have qualified immunity, and he was trying to convince me to agree with that, and I said, ‘No, police officers have to make a split second decision about whether or not to shoot a gun to protect themselves or protect others. And if they’re having to think about, will this strip my whole family of everything … are they going to be able to make that split-second decision?’”

“And I said, ‘I believe that people will get killed. Police officers will get killed.’ And he said, ‘Well, maybe if a few of them died, they would move on, not shooting people, not killing people.’ And I said, ‘That’s insane.’”

Jones, who previously denied that the conversation ever took place, said in a statement, “I take full responsibility for my actions, and I want to issue my deepest apology to Speaker Gilbert and his family. Reading back those words made me sick to my stomach. I am embarrassed, ashamed, and sorry.”

“I have reached out to Speaker Gilbert to apologize directly to him, his wife Jennifer, and their children. I cannot take back what I said; I can only take full accountability and offer my sincere apology. Virginians deserve honest leaders who admit when they are wrong and own up to their mistakes. This was a grave mistake, and I will work every day to prove to the people of Virginia that I will fight for them as attorney general.”

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