District 4 Supervisor Patrick Jones and his wife Lori Jones. Photo source: Facebook.
The last call of the final few minutes of KQMS talk radio host Kelly Frost’s two-hour Saturday morning show dropped a bombshell.
The caller was Lori Jones, wife of District 4 Supervisor Patrick Jones. She’d called Frost’s program to discuss recent allegations that her husband had authored the controversial elections radio ad that aired — and has subsequently been pulled — on KQMS.
During the Saturday morning call to Frost’s talk show, Freedom in Action, Lori Jones defended her husband.
“I kept hearing how my husband Patrick had written that ad,” Lori Jones said.
She then added what seemed a non sequitur regarding earlier comments on Frosts’ show by “Stones” (aka Richard Gallardo), combined with alledged false accusations against her husband.
“… Because I know Stones had brought up about contacting you if you had any questions about ballots or anything that you needed help with knowing how to report those.”
(Click here for Richard Gallardo’s election-related March 9 comments on Frost’s morning show, to which Lori Jones referred.)
Lori Jones went on to say that erroneous information had been repeated that credited her husband as the ad’s author.
“He did not — 100 percent had nothing to do with that,” she said.
When Frost countered that Patrick Jones had accompanied Gray into the recording studio, Lori explained that it was only because Gray was unfamiliar with how to record a commercial.
About that phone number
You can hear the ad in question, narrated by Gray, below. She starts the ad by identifying herself as someone with the Shasta County Elections Commission. She also provides a phone number that appears on callers’ phones as from Shasta Lake — (530) 238-5845. A News Cafe called that number several times, but received a constant busy signal.
Community advocate Nathan Pinkney tried the number soon after the commercial first aired. Pinkney reported via a video on his social media pages that the number was affiliated with Jon Knight’s partner’s business phone number.
Knight, who attended the Jan. 6 2021 insurrection in Washington, D.C., is noteworthy for several other reasons. The Shasta County Board majority — Jones, Kevin Crye and Chris Kelstrom — appointed Knight to the Shasta County Mosquito and Vector Board over more qualified candidates, including an epidemiologist and a biologist.
Also, Knight is an ardent election-denier, and helped finance the Red, White and Blueprint docuseries.
Is an investigation underway?
Lori Jones continued with the subject of her call, and explained to Frost why Patrick Jones was seen with Gray inside the recording studio.
“He went down with her and helped her,” Lori Jones insisted. “But he did not write it — he didn’t.”
Lori Jones then disclosed that a pair of detectives were investigating Jones’ part in the ad, and had questioned the person who’d created the ad for the radio station.
The discontinued ad resulted in a stern county press release that instructed citizens to ignore the ad’s requests.
An excerpt of the county press release said: “The ad directed Shasta County residents to report any election mail and voting materials that do not belong to a member of their household to a specific private citizen’s phone number. However, it’s crucial to note that this message is not from nor approved by the Shasta County Registrar of Voters, the Shasta County Board of Supervisors, or the Shasta County Elections Commission.
According to California law, voter registration information is confidential and not considered public information accessible to all members of the public.”
Gray Scapegoat
A few days following the March 1 press release, a story by Damon Arthur in the Redding Record Searchlight reported Jones’ reaction to being questioned about the ad that featured the voice of Bev Gray.
In the Record Searchlight story, Jones strongly denied involvement with the ad. He distanced himself from it, and put all the blame at the feet of Gray, Jones’ pick for the Shasta County Election Commission, a toothless entity that was Jones’ brainchild, but that has no authority over any part of Shasta County’s election process.
“Bev Gray, she wrote that ad. She sent the ad. That’s it, so that they can’t spin it any other way. They may not like me, that’s fine. But that’s incorrect,” Jones said in the Record Searchlight story.
As Frost informed Lori Jones that the show was running out of time, she tearfully explained what she believed was the injustice of how her husband was being treated and accused of something he didn’t do, and added that her husband and his sister have received death threats.
“I thought that that was very interesting that they could take the time to send two detectives … and my husband gets threatened, that someone’s going to kill him and his sister, and we get a letter back from the DA that they’re not going to prosecute,” Lori Jones said.
With that, Frost’s show was over and Lori Jones’ call ended abruptly.
“I apologize,” Frost said. “But I gotta run. We refer these matters to Media Plus. Over and out!”
Jones’ radio show admissions
The identities of the elections radio ad writer and funder remain unknown, despite the fact that on Election Day, while Gray and District 2 Supervisor candidate Laura Hobbs observed the elections process until after 1 a.m., I asked Gray for a comment about who wrote the ad, and who paid for it.
Gray replied with two words, “No comment”.
Bev Gray, right, had no comment on election night regarding the election-related ad she’d narrated, an ad that’s since been pulled. Photo by Doni Chamberlain
Gray, Supervisor Patrick Jones’ appointment to the Shasta County Election Commission, also seems his designated scape goat for the controversial ad that smacks of election interference, a federal offense.
Incumbent Patrick Jones
Although Gray refuses to comment, Supervisor Jones continues to deliver some highly incriminating public statements about the election, words that call into question his denials about having no affiliation with the now-banished radio ad.
Take, for example, these recent clips from Mark Kent’s Sunday, March 3 Sovereign Minds KCNR radio show, where Lori and Patrick Jones stopped by the station to say a few words two days before the election.
First is a longer clip of a conversation between Kent and Jones.
Second, is the clip where Jones starts by admitting to having collected ballots. He ends by asking, “What are we going to do about it”?
Key words: ‘They’re being collected’
In the subsequent clip are crucial words where Jones’ admits that he’s been collecting citizens’ ballots. He goes on to claim fraud in Shasta County elections, and takes credit for eliminating the county’s Dominion Voting system.
What lies ahead for Shasta County’s election results?
Shasta County’s final election results may remain unknown at least until after March 15. The most recent update was Friday, March 8.
But so far, the race between Supervisor Patrick Jones and his challenger Matt Plummer is going strong, with Plummer well in the lead.
The same is true with the District 2 Supervisor race where Jones’ pick, Laura Hobbs, is trailing well behind candidate Allen Long.
Consider that candidates Jones, Hobbs, Win Carpenter, and other election-deniers have claimed fraud in Shasta County elections. That mindset begs the question: If they lose, will they accept the results? And what if they win? What then? Would Shasta County’s elections become suddenly fair and acceptable?
For the answer, Jones himself posed the question that only leads to more feelings of election insecurity, instability and uncertainty.
What are they going to do about it?
Here’s the even more important question: What are we going to do about it?
Editor’s note: Ads aired on KQMS radio are not necessarily created by KQMS staff.
###
