This article originally appeared here, at nationalreview.com
Virginia Democrats are resting their hopes on a curious attorney general pick this fall: a 36-year-old avowed progressive with no prosecutorial experience.
Jay Jones is an avowed progressive — he told the Daily Kos he was “not ashamed” of the descriptor in 2021, during his first and unsuccessful run for the party’s AG nomination — and his record serving in the Virginia House from 2018 to 2022 proves it. But Republicans are hoping that record, specifically his votes on crime- and immigration-related bills, will be enough to turn voters off in the current political environment.
Republicans backing incumbent Attorney General Jason Miyares say Jones lacks experience prosecuting criminals, with a résumé that instead includes work for Goldman Sachs, the D.C. attorney general office’s consumer protection department, and private firms such as Protogyrou Law, a Virginia criminal defense and immigration firm.
“I sponsored bipartisan laws to strengthen penalties for sex offenders, keep kids safe in schools, and establish a Youth and Gang Violence Prevention Grant Fund and Program to stop gangs like MS-13,” his campaign site reads.
And yet during his brief tenure in the Virginia House of Delegates, Jones racked up a state legislative record that Republicans pan as “soft on crime,” including his vote against mandatory 60-day jail sentence minimums for repeat domestic abusers and his opposition to legislation to enact harsher criminal penalties for fentanyl dealers. He also supported a bill to roll back mandatory law enforcement reporting requirements for school principals for misdemeanors committed on school grounds, including sexual abuse and battery, and opposed legislation to charge massage and physical therapists who sexually abuse patients with aggravated sexual battery.
On the immigration security front, he voted against legislation to crack down on sanctuary-city policies in Virginia. He also co-sponsored legislation in 2019 that would have stopped requiring that intake officers “report to the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security any juvenile detained on an allegation that the juvenile, believed to be in the United States illegally, committed a violent felony.” That controversial 2019 bill also sought to roll back existing laws requiring “jail officers to ascertain the citizenship of any inmate taken into custody at a jail,” “probation and parole officers to inquire as to the citizenship status of an individual convicted of a felony in circuit court and referred to such officers,” and “officers in charge of correctional facilities to inquire as to the citizenship of any person committed to a correctional facility.”
While not eager to discuss those controversial votes he racked up as a legislator in Virginia, Jones has been quick to take credit for a high-profile case that the District of Columbia won against a so-called “ghost gun” manufacturer when he was assistant attorney general in the nation’s capital.
But court documents suggest Jones is exaggerating his role in that victory, bolstering Virginia Republicans’ arguments that he is out of his depth in his bid to succeed Republican Attorney General Miyares.
“When I was an assistant attorney general, I sued Polymer80, the largest ghost gun manufacturer in the country, and put them out of business,” Jones told the Virginia Scope in June. And according to his campaign site, he “took on the gun lobby and helped take illegal guns off the streets by securing a landmark victory putting a ghost gun manufacturer selling untraceable guns out of business.”
But it wasn’t Jones who brought the case. D.C.’s former Attorney General Karl Racine filed the lawsuit against Polymer80, Inc., on June 24, 2020. Jones wasn’t an assistant attorney general for D.C.’s OAG until March 2022, according to his LinkedIn page – nearly two years after that lawsuit was filed. Jones’s only recorded court appearances in the case occurred on April 22, 2022, when he attended status and motion hearings on behalf of the plaintiff, according to public filings reviewed by National Review, weeks after a motion for summary judgment had already been filed. D.C.’s further reply in support of that motion for summary judgment was filed on April 22, the same and only day Jones appeared in court, but his name did not appear on the brief.
And while he worked for several years as an attorney in Virginia following his graduation from University of Virginia School of Law in 2015, he wasn’t admitted to the D.C. Bar until December 22, 2022, or roughly nine months after he joined the D.C. attorney general’s office. He left the office shortly thereafter in January 2023, according to his LinkedIn page.
Pressed for comment, the Jones campaign did not dispute National Review’s findings but dismissed the story as a distraction from Republican ticket’s failures.
“As your own reporting shows, Jay Jones worked to put the country’s largest ghost gun manufacturer out of business in the community he served,” said Jones communications director Georgia Greenleaf. “Jones has always prioritized the safety of Virginia families, supporting the largest public safety increase in VA history, cracking down on sex offenders, and passing common-sense gun reform laws. This is nothing but a partisan attempt to deflect from Jason Miyares failing to protect Virginians from Donald Trump’s attacks on their economy, livelihoods, and healthcare every single day.”
Beyond his controversial state legislative record, Jones also supports an amendment that would codify the “fundamental right to reproductive freedom,” which has drawn criticism from Republicans for excluding fetal viability and parental consent from its definition of state compelling interest.
“I think that it’s been debated in the legislature, voted upon. My sincere hope is that we get a Democratic majority in the House of Delegates to pass this again,” Jones told ABC8 News in August when pressed on Republicans’ concerns surrounding parental consent. “This will just enshrine protections in our constitution that women in Virginia deserve, and I look forward to defending this as the next Attorney General of Virginia.”