Veteran Daniel Penny, acquitted in NYC subway chokehold, will join Trump’s suite at football game

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Daniel Penny, a military veteran who choked an agitated New York subway rider and was acquitted of homicide this week, has been invited by Vice President-elect JD Vance to join Donald Trump’s suite at the Army-Navy football game on Saturday.

The Marine veteran was cleared of criminally negligent homicide in Jordan Neely ’s 2023 death. A more serious manslaughter charge was dismissed last week.

Vance said Penny, 26, accepted his invitation to join him and the president-elect at the game.

“Daniel’s a good guy, and New York’s mob district attorney tried to ruin his life for having a backbone,” Vance said in a post on X. “I’m grateful he accepted my invitation and hope he’s able to have fun and appreciate how much his fellow citizens admire his courage.”

The case sparked national debate, with some hailing Penny as a hero for attempting to subdue a man he considered a menace to public safety and others seeing him as a white vigilante who choked a Black man to death.

Political figures on the right have defended Penny since he was charged for the death in May 2023. Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who ran for the GOP presidential nomination and was tapped by Trump last month to lead en effort along with billionaire Elon Musk to cut government spending, donated money to his legal defense fund.

After the acquittal, Penny gave an extensive interview to Fox News and told host Jeanine Pirro that he’s “not a confrontational person.” He told the network that he wouldn’t have been able to live with “the guilt I would have felt if someone did get hurt, if he did do what he was threatening to do.”

“I’ll take a million court appearances and people calling me names and people hating me, just to keep one of those people from getting hurt or killed,” Penny said.

Trump has not referred to the case publicly recently, but last year he told The Messenger that he thought Penny and other people on the subway were “in great danger.”

Some New Yorkers protested the trial outcome earlier this week, holding signs and chanting Jordan Neely’s name in a Manhattan square.

Vance, who served in the Marine Corps, including in Iraq, said this week that “justice was done in this case” and Penny never should have been prosecuted.

Penny has been hailed a hero by many, but Neely’s death also divided the city as residents grapple with how to respond to mental health crises threatening public safety.

Passengers said Neely hadn’t touched anyone but had expressed willingness to die, go to jail or even to kill. The former street performer was homeless, had schizophrenia and had synthetic marijuana in his system. He had been convicted of assaulting people at subway stations.

Adriana Gomez Licon, The Associated Press