Del. Carrie Coyner, R-Chesterfield, sat down with Virginia Scope on Monday morning to discuss the controversy surrounding text messages sent to her in 2022 by Virginia’s Democratic attorney general nominee Jay Jones. In the conversation with Virginia Scope, Coyner talked about what actions she took when she received the texts and why it took years for them to become public. She also discussed previous conversations with Jones in which she said that he told her in 2020 that if a few police officers died, then maybe they would stop killing people. Jones denies he said this.
The National Review first broke news of the texts and phone call between Jones and Coyner on Friday. In the text conversation, Jones tells Coyner that if he were with former Republican House Speaker Todd, Pol Pot, and Hitler, and only had two bullets, he would shoot Gilbert twice.
The National Review also detailed a phone call between Coyner and Jones that took place during the text conversation. Coyner recounted the conversation with Virginia Scope on Monday morning.
From Coyner: “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. 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.”
Coyner, when describing her call with Jones, said her told her that if Gilbert’s wife had to experience her children dying, then maybe the speaker would consider a change in gun policy.
The text conversation continued after the phone call. “You were talking about [hoping] Jennifer Gilbert’s children would die,” Coyner wrote to him.
“Yes, I’ve told you this before. Only when people feel pain personally do they move on policy,” Jones responded.
When asked what Jones was referencing when he said “I’ve told you this before,” Coyner said it goes back to a heated phone call in 2020 about removing qualified immunity protections for law enforcement. (Qualified immunity protects police officers from civil lawsuits.)
Coyner said Monday morning: “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. 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, that they would move on, not shooting people, not killing people.’ And I said, ‘that’s insane.’ But he firmly believed that if you removed qualified immunity, that police officers would act differently, and I firmly believe that it would not result in good public policy, and it would put police officers and the public’s lives at risk if they have to second-guess themselves on a decision they’re making in a moment where someone is doing something violent.”
Jones was a sponsor of legislation to remove qualified immunity when he was a member of the House of Delegates.
“I did not say this,” Jones said in a statement to Virginia Scope Monday afternoon. “I have never believed and do not believe that any harm should come to law enforcement, period. Every single day, police officers put their lives on the line to protect our communities, and I am deeply grateful for their service and sacrifice. As Attorney General, I will work hand-in-hand with law enforcement to support their work.”
Before Jones provided a statement, a lawyer for his campaign called Virginia Scope and would not agree to speak on the record, so Virginia Scope ended the phone call.
With the texts being publicly released three years later, so close to the election, Democrats have pushed back on Coyner and Republicans for waiting to release the screenshots at the most opportune time for them.
Coyner said she called Gilbert in 2022 after the conversation with Jones to inform him of what was said.
She said the news was upsetting for Gilbert and that he thanked her for letting him know about it.
Gilbert did not answer a phone call from Virginia Scope on Monday morning.
Coyner said she did not speak to Jones again after that conversation and that she didn’t know anything about the texts being released until she was contacted for comment by the National Review last week.
Jones’ opponent, Attorney General Jason Miyares, said during a press conference Saturday that he learned about the texts when the National Review story was published.
Speaker of the House Don Scott, D-Portsmouth, was in Coyner’s district on Sunday. He spoke at a church in Hopewell and encouraged attendees to support Coyner’s Democratic opponent, Lindsey Dougherty.
“I need y’all to understand something. I came here because I support Lindsay Dougherty,” Scott said in a 12-minute speech at Mt. Calvary Baptist Church. “We need her. She will help me get the agenda done. [Coyner] has done nothing but try to betray the agenda that we’ve tried to move forward for us. I’m telling the truth, nothing but betray the agenda of trying to do for us. There are people trying to take 300,000 Virginians off of health care right now. So we need to understand something, we have to be mature in our thinking and how we vote. We can’t get distracted because they want us to get distracted by the text message here, or something else. Stay focused.”
Coyner said it was hard for her to have the speaker in her district two days after this story broke.
“I know that he is not happy about this information coming out,” Coyner said. “I do think it’s important that people know what happened. I gave it to the person it impacted. It was Todd’s to share, not mine. It’s not lost on me that this impacted what his kids are going to see forever in the media, and it wasn’t my place to go and give this to anyone else but the person impacted. And it’s not lost on me that it’s a big deal for this to be put out there for other people to see, especially in the climate that we’re in. But you know, Don Scott coming to a church in my district yesterday, when he hasn’t been here at all, felt very intimidating, I will be honest, and I don’t think it’s OK. I didn’t do anything wrong in this, and I was honest when I was asked, and I gave it to the person impacted by it when it happened, and so it definitely impacted me, knowing that he was here yesterday.”
State Sen. Lashresce Aird, D-Petersburg, said she invited Scott to speak at the church in an area that both she and Coyner represent before the news broke about the text messages.
“For [Coyner], being the victim is sort of her default,” Aird said. “But in this instance, coming into her district is further from the truth, because, to be clear, it is my district, and I invited the speaker to come to visit churches with me and Lindsay Dougherty because I also think the fact that it is a battleground race that Lindsay is running, and the fact that he is a historical Black speaker, and we have a lot on the line that the people in the community of Hopewell should hear from him directly about what’s at stake in this election.”
“It’s not unusual that I would visit battleground candidates,” Scott said in an interview Monday morning.
Coyner said Democrats and Republicans in the General Assembly often text with each other and typically have a friendly relationship.
“Sitting in committees, we all text back and forth,” Coyner said. “Especially when you’re trying to convince someone to vote with you on something. You’re trying to convince somebody on a policy issue, we have conversations back and forth. And a lot of us who considered ourselves friends would continue to talk outside of session.”