The Jay Jones texts were private messages from 2022, leaked in the closing fortnight of the 2025 Virginia campaign, in which the Democratic candidate for attorney general joked to a friend about violence against Republicans. John Kiriakou was asked about them twice, and his answer moved.
What was in them
A viewer put the question directly, characterising it as “the Democrat talking about killing his opponent and his family.” Kiriakou agreed with the framing of its importance — “that’s become the biggest issue in the Virginia statewide races” — and described the content more mildly: “he was joking in a text exchange with a friend of his, and he said something about like target practice against Republicans, or some stupid thing like that.”[1]
Corrected by the host that there had been more than one message, he accepted it: “yeah, it was several. It wasn’t just one. He said several different things.”[1][2]
The reflex, and the revision
His first answer was condemnation. “My knee-jerk reaction is: shame on him. He’s advocating violence, even if he’s doing it in what he says to be a joking manner” — and, as the host added and he repeated, in a private conversation.[2]
The second answer arrived seconds later and reversed the emphasis. “And I’ve gotten to the point where my position is: we all talk shit privately. The Republicans pull this shit all the time. I don’t care.”[2]
He supported the symmetry with an example from the previous week — a Young Republicans text scandal — and agreed with it twice.[2][3]
The prediction that failed
On 5 November, with the result in, Kiriakou returned to the affair to note that the expected punishment had not materialised. The messages had been leaked on 22 October, “less than two weeks ago”, and concerned “shooting Republicans in the head.” He set that against the standard he had already described: “this is something Republicans have done time and time again, but this time, of course, they completely lose their minds because a Democrat did it. And nobody cared.”[4]
The forecast everyone had made was of split tickets — voters backing Spanberger for governor and the Republican for attorney general. “That didn’t happen.” Jones won.[5]
Kiriakou’s closing note is agnostic about the man himself: “now, we’ll see what Jay Jones does in this position.”[5]