Republican Virginia State Delegate Geary Higgins criticized Democrats for supporting Virginia Attorney General candidate Jay Jones, a Democrat, after texts Jones reportedly wrote in 2022 expressed violent intent toward the Republican former Virginia House Speaker Todd Gilbert were shared on social media on Sunday.
Placing Jones’s texts into a GOP-purported pattern of left wing violence, Higgins wrote: “They shot the President. They killed Charlie Kirk. They threatened to kill Kim Taylor. They said they’d kill ME at my next rally, then my kids,” among other claims. (Taylor is, like Higgins, a Republican Virginia State Delegate.)
[NOTE: Political violence and incendiary rhetoric are on the rise on both sides of the deepening American divide, with myriad recent episodes of American political violence including Charlie Kirk’s assassination, two assassination attempts on President Trump, the beating of Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul Pelosi, arson at the home of Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, the killing of a retired Wisconsin judge, the murder of two Minnesota lawmakers and the connected shooting of two others — with victims on both the right and the left.]
Recognizing only one side of the problem, President Trump’s director of the FCC, Brendan Carr, amplified Higgins’ post and added: “The partisan left has created an entire ecosystem to foment, encourage, and justify political violence.”
[Note: Trump said Jones should drop out of the race “immediately” and endorsed Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares.]
Conservative power lawyer Gregg Nunziata, who served in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division before serving as policy counsel to the Senate Republican Policy Committee, and later as general counsel and domestic policy adviser to then-Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), also objected to Jones’s texts and to any Democrats who would excuse them.
Jones should lose. I'm extra excited to vote for Miyares again. It's a disgrace that Dems would excuse this stuff to win an AG race. Dems who tell us that our current crisis is bigger than partisanship should start acting that way.
— Gregg Nunziata (@greggnunziata) October 6, 2025
(AGs shouldn't be elected.) https://t.co/671vKCJkJg
Nunziata wrote on social media: “Jones should lose,” and “It’s a disgrace that Dems would excuse this stuff to win an AG race. Dems who tell us that our current crisis is bigger than partisanship should start acting that way.”
Nunziata was also critical of FCC Chairman Carr’s reaction to Higgins’s complaint.
Currently the executive director of The Society for the Rule of Law with fellow conservative Trump critics including George Conway, Nunziata wrote of Carr’s post: “This is the kind of thing someone eager to abuse his power and censor the political speech of his fellow Americans might say.”
This is the kind of thing someone eager to abuse his power and censor the political speech of his fellow Americans might say. https://t.co/2ymBdD2rM8
— Gregg Nunziata (@greggnunziata) October 6, 2025
