Vice President-elect J.D. Vance invited Daniel Penny to Saturday’s Army-Navy game, who will join President-elect Donald Trump in his suite.
NOTUS reported this on Friday to the invitation, which came after Penny was acquitted of a negligent homicide charge by a Manhattan jury on Tuesday.
Conservatives have cheered Penny’s acquittal, claiming the Marine veteran was a Good Samaritan when he put 30-year-old Jordan Neely in a chokehold on the New York City subway.
“Daniel is a good guy, and the New York District Attorney tried to ruin his life because he had a backbone,” Vance wrote to X on Friday. “I’m grateful he accepted my invitation and I hope he can have fun and can appreciate how much his fellow citizens admire his courage.’
At the same time, liberal New Yorkers protested after the verdict, claiming that justice was not served by letting a white man get away with killing a black man.
Penny, a four-year veteran of the Marines, is white, while Neely, a former street performer who had schizophrenia and synthetic marijuana in his system, was black.
On May 1, 2023, Penny put Neely in a chokehold for about six minutes after Neely had an outburst that scared other subway passengers.
On Tuesday, he sat down for a Fox Nation interview with Judge Jeanine Pirro — his first extended comments after the acquittal — and said he was “not a confrontational person” but was worried someone might get hurt when Neely got on his subway and started behaving erratically. .
Daniel Penny sat down with Judge Jeanine Pirro for a Fox Nation interview on Tuesday after being acquitted of a negligent homicide charge by a Manhattan jury. He was invited to attend Saturday’s Army-Navy game with newly elected Vice President J.D. Vance
Vice President-elect J.D. Vance confirmed in an X-post Friday morning that he had invited Daniel Penny to the Army-Navy game
“I’m going to have to go through a million court hearings and people calling me names and people hating me, just to keep one of those people from getting hurt or killed,” Penny said.
He added “the guilt I would have felt if someone got hurt, if he did what he threatened to do.”
Penny told Pirro he was in a “very vulnerable position” as he held Neely on the floor of the subway.
“If I just let him go, I’m on my back right now, he could just turn around and start doing what he told me… kill, hurt,” Penny said.
Along with the racial divisions, Trump’s allies were skeptical of the case because it was brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, whose office also charged Trump in the Stormy Daniels hush money case.
Penny called New York City officials “self-interested” in his conversation with Pirro.
“These are their policies that clearly haven’t worked,” he said, adding that “their egos are too big to just admit they are wrong.”