Commissioner Justin Jones Faces Disbarment For Destroying Evidence

Clark County Commissioner Justin Jones (D-District F) faces disbarment or suspension of his law license in the wake of a federal judge’s decision that found him liable for destroying evidence, lying to the court, and a subsequent State Bar investigation. Attorneys for the State Bar met with Jones last Thursday and have scheduled an additional hearing for late March.

According to an investigation by Channel 8 news:

“Disbarment is on the table,” Daniel Hooge, bar counsel, said Friday.

Hooge and attorneys for Jones held an informal hearing Thursday, remotely, in which the two sides argued motions related to Jones and his law license. Attorneys for the bar also added a second complaint to the original set of allegations against Jones. The hearing lasted some three-and-a-half hours, Hooge said.

The state bar’s complaint against Jones, the District F commissioner, deals with his conduct during and after the Gypsum deal.

Hooge, the bar counsel, said the disciplinary committee deciding the case must determine Jones’ mental state and the “size of the injury” caused by any misconduct Jones is found to have committed. Essentially, the issue boils down to whether Jones acted negligently or, alternatively, acted intentionally in deleting data from his phone, among other things.

“We see this as intentional misconduct, and we see the injury as serious,” Hooge said.

In a previous report by The Las Vegas Review Journal, Commissioner Jones had been accused by attorneys of Gypsum Resources of deleting public records (text messages) and colluding with then-Clark County Commissioner, candidate for Governor Steve Sisolak to impede their development efforts in Red Rock Canyon.

At the time of Gypsum’s development agreement with Clark County, Attorney Jones had worked pro-bono for Save Red Rock (SRR). During Jones’ campaign for County Commissioner, he vowed to oppose Gypsum’s development plans within his first 100 days of office.

Gypsum Resources’ lawyers reportedly obtained a text message thread between Jones and the former head of Nevada Conservation League Andy Maggi in October 2018, in which Jones said, “Well, I’m doing my part. If Sisolak doesn’t want to play, then it’s going to blow up in his face tomorrow.”

A court-ordered forensic audit of Jones’ cell phone and iCloud accounts found that all of Jones’s text messages leading up to the April 2019 vote on Gypsum’s development agreement were deleted and unrecoverable. The earliest messages on Jones’s phone were from roughly six hours after the commission voted unanimously to deny Gypsum Resource’s request to waive a condition and proceed with their preliminary plan to develop 3,000 homes.

Gypsum settled their decade-long, multi-billion lawsuit against the county for $80 million in 2023.

Last May, Jones stepped down as Vice Chair of the commission in the wake of the scandal.

In a press release, Jones announced: “By stepping down as Vice Chair, I am hopeful that the ongoing and contested legal disputes in the Gypsum Resources litigation will not distract further from the important work of Clark County and the Board. I remain focused on my work as a Clark County Commissioner and the constituents I have been elected to serve.”

Jones was elected to County Commission in 2018 and narrowly re-elected to a second four-year term in 2022. He is married to Megan Jones, who serves as a Special Assistant to Vice President Kamala Harris.