Video reveals reinstated Tennessee Rep. hurling traffic cone at a driver during BLM protest – Daily Mail

Reinstated Tennessee lawmaker Justin Jones isseen in unearthed surveillance video hitting a driver with a traffic cone amid a June 2020 Black Lives Matter protest outside the state capitol.

The footage shows Jones, who was elected in 2022, wearing all black and a tan-brimmed hat while standing in the street with six others. The future lawmaker is seen stopping cars and harassing drivers.

At the time, Jones, now 27, faced a series of charges after District Attorney Glenn Funk secretly went to the grand jury in an attempt to indict him for participating in the protests in an 'aggravating' manner.

Jones claimed in 2021 that his participation in the protests was non-violent and referred to the charges, that were later dropped, as 'dramatic' retaliation.

Jones has continued his activism as an elected official, and was recently expelled from the legislature for his gun control protest on the House floor following the Covenant School shooting that left six dead.He and another lawmaker were reinstated days later.

In the street surveillance footage from 2020, Jones appeared to be standing with a small group of six people while obstructing traffic at the state capitol.

The video showed the group stopping a white truck that attempted to pass. It's unclear why the group stopped the truck but they can be seen approaching the driver with a megaphone.

Jones was seen grabbing onto a traffic cone and jabbing the driver as the driver then tried to evade the group, including the people standing in front of his car.

Despite the evidence, Jones wrote on Twitter that he wasn't 'violent' when the charges against him first surfaced in 2021

'They will try to push a false narrative portraying me as violent as a way to deflect from their own actions,' Jones wrote. 'They will suggest that I am out of order. That is their strategy.'

Jones's tweet has since resurfaced with one person rushing to comment that he was 'peacefully rioting' rather than 'peacefully protesting.'

Jones along with Democrat lawmaker Justin Pearson, 27, were expelled after they joineda March 30 protest against gun laws, bringing a bullhorn onto the House floor amid a noisy demonstration.

They were joined in their protest by Gloria Johnson, 60, a veteran member of the legislature, who is white. Jones and Pearson were voted out of the House on Thursday. Johnson was not.

Members of the state's GOP referred to the protest as an 'insurrection' before ousting the two last Thursday.

They were the firsttwo people expelled from the Tennessee state legislature since the Civil War.

They quickly garnered the support of national leaders, including President Joe Biden, who referred to the expulsion as 'shocking, undemocratic, and without precedent.'

Jones and Pearson got their jobs back in a 36-0 vote by Nashville's governing council on April 10. Jones was reinstated on Monday and Pearson on Wednesday.

Since the March protest, there was another mass shooting in nearby Kentucky, it was the 146th mass shooting of 2023.

Five people were killed when a 25-year-old banker entered his workplace with an AR-15 and targeted top executives before he himself was killed

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Video reveals reinstated Tennessee Rep. hurling traffic cone at a driver during BLM protest - Daily Mail

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