LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — Clark County Commissioner Justin Jones repeatedly said "I don't recall" on Monday in response to questions posed by lawyers for a developer who has long sought to build homes near Red Rock Canyon.
Many of the questions centered on the deletion of text messages from Jones's personal cell phone, which came just hours after a key commission vote in the decades-long saga.
Attorneys for developer Jim Rhodes repeatedly sought to show Jones deleted the messages because they may have provided evidence of Jones's bias against the project. Before he was elected to the commission, Jones served as an attorney for the group Save Red Rock, which vehemently opposed Rhodes's plans to build homes atop Blue Diamond Hill, near the Red Rock Canyon Conservation Area.
Those plans date to 2003, when Rhodes — via a company known as Gypsum Resources LLC — purchased the land. Litigation has been going on against both the state and Clark County since 2005 because of rules that sought to prevent the development.
When Jones first ran for commissioner in 2018, he promised to fight the development.
Todd Bice, an attorney for Rhodes and Gypsum, hammered away at Jones over the missing texts, prompting the commissioner to repeatedly say he did not recall deleting them. Gypsum is seeking sanctions against Jones for destroying evidence they say he knew, or should have known, was important to the case.
"I don't recall doing it, but I understand from [a forensic data company's] review of my cell phone records that that is what occurred," Jones said. "I have no explanation for that."
Jones and Bice clashed repeatedly during the cross examination.
Bice questioned Jones about an email in which the commissioner wrote that approving a land use plan for the Blue Diamond Hill development would increase the value of the property and constitute a "giveaway" to Rhodes and "his high-powered lobbyist." And Bice displayed a photo from Jones's Facebook page showing Jones posing as a superhero fighting his "arch-nemesis Jim the Sprawl Developer."
But Jones later insisted that, despite his views about the development, he's done nothing untoward in his approach to the Blue Diamond Hill plans.
"I take my job as the county commissioner very seriously," he said. "Over the course of years, I've demonstrated that I've been absolutely fair with respect to Gypsum."
Under cross-examination, Jones detailed some of the reasons he opposed the project, including opposition from constituents, the fact that it would comprise 5,000 homes, that it was too close to the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area, that there is limited road access to the site, that it would add traffic to the area and that the excavation required to build utilities would deface the east site of the hill leading to the project.
Jones maintained he'd acted properly while handling the Blue Diamond Hill development, but Bice disagreed.
"If all of what you just said is what really happened here, there's no need to destroy evidence, sir. Is there?" Bice asked pointedly.
"I don't recall it," Jones replied.
"But you did it!" Bice shot back. "And you did it for a reason, right?"
"I don't recall," Jones said.
A clearly exhausted Jones declined to comment to Channel 13 after his hourslong testimony ended.
If District Court Judge Joanna Kishner decides to impose sanctions, it would not be the first time. Jones was sanctioned by federal Magistrate Judge Elayna Youchah over the same issue in April 2023 in a separate case.
"The Court can find no logical — even if unlikely — explanation for what happened to Mr. Jones' texts other than the disappointing explanation that Mr. Jones deleted his texts worried the disclosure would yield a negative or unfavorable outcome for him," Youchah wrote. "That Mr. Jones was less than candid about the declaration when testifying at deposition and in declarations, as well as when presenting argument to this Court, is clear. Whether the act of deleting the evidence in bad faith or for an improper motive is not a close call."
That ruling led the State Bar of Nevada to open an investigation into Jones in May 2023. As of Monday evening, however, the Bar lists no discipline against Jones on its website.
