Tennessee’s Justin Jones tossed cone at driver at BLM protest

Unearthed surveillance footage from a 2020 Black Lives Matter protest outside the Tennessee Capitol shows newly reinstated Rep. Justin Jones throwing a traffic cone at a driver in frustration.

Jones, 27, who was returned to office after leading a protest in the Capitol against gun violence in the wake of the Nashville school shooting, was seen on video blocking a street with six other demonstrators on June 18, 2020.

Dressed in all black and a tan-brimmed hat, the future lawmaker could be seen attempting to stop a white truck trying to drive around them by placing a traffic cone in front of the vehicle.

Undeterred, the driver runs over the cone, causing the group to approach the truck and yell at him with a megaphone.

Appearing angered by the driver’s actions, Jones can be seen pulling the cone from underneath the vehicle and using it to repeatedly jab the driver, who attempts to smack it away.

As the driver tries to speed up, Jones tosses it into the truck, but the driver quickly pushes it out and makes his getaway.

During the incident, another driver on the opposite side of the stalled road could also be seen confronting the protesters, with their vehicle inching forward until it bumped into one of them.

Despite the small push, the protester, wearing a neon-green long-sleeve shirt, threw themselves on the ground and lay down in front of the car as another demonstrator rushed to check on them.

Jones has repeatedly claimed that the chaotic incident was not violent after District Attorney Glenn Funk attempted to indict him in 2021 for participating in the protests in an “aggravating” manner.

He noted that the man in the white van was allegedly hurling “racial slurs” at the protesters and that he was the one at fault for pushing his car past them.

Defending himself on Twitter at the time, Jones wrote: “They will try to push a false narrative portraying me as ‘violent’ as a way to deflect from their own actions. They will suggest that I am out of order. That is their strategy.”

The charges pressed against Jones for the protest were all dropped.

Jones has recently made headlines after he and fellow Democrat Justin Pearson, 28, both of whom are black, were expelled from the state legislature after they joined protests on the House floor on March 30.

The demonstration called on lawmakers to pass gun reform policies following the horrific mass shooting at Nashville’s Covenant School, where three 9-year-old children and three faculty members were shot dead by Audrey Hale, a 28-year-old alumnus of the Christian school.

Gloria Johnson, 60, a fellow lawmaker who is white, was notably not expelled despite demonstrating with her fellow Democrats.

Jones and Pearson were reinstated earlier this week after their respective governing councils voted them back into office.