Jay Jones Hints at Just What Kind of Attorney General He Might Be

It is considered impolite to say, “We told you so.” However, after the debate Thursday between Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares and his Democrat challenger, Jay Jones, the temptation to is daunting.

Last week, in the wake of the “October Surprise” release of Jones’ text messages from 2022 where he fantasized about shooting then-Republican Speaker of the House of Delegates Todd Gilbert and about Gilbert’s two children dying in his wife’s arms, we published a look into the substantial punitive power that a Virginia attorney general has—power that Jones could wield if he were elected.

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The Competitive Enterprise Institute detailed some of that power several years ago in a report titled “Law Enforcement for Rent.” As one example, the report detailed efforts by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to place lawyers in various state attorneys general offices in the U.S. who his nonprofit would pay and whose mission it was to target persons and businesses that gave money to climate researchers who were debunking “green energy” propaganda.

Imagine someone with the attitude of Jones—who defended his texts at the time by telling the state delegate he sent them to: “Name a time when people make actual change on public policy without feeling personal pain”—at the helm of an attorney general’s office with the vast ability to punish businesses and citizens by launching probes and announcing them to the press.

Just ask New York Attorney General Letitia James how that works.

During Thursday’s televised debate, after Jones reiterated how sorry he was about the whole texting scandal (though he didn’t specifically say he was sorry about thinking such a thing), he later went on to make our case for us.

He said to the audience, “I will see Jason Miyares and [President] Donald Trump in court as your next attorney general.” Then he said, “We have to hold the president accountable, go after Donald Trump and the bad actions of this administration.”

Instead of “We told you so,” how about, “We rest our case.”