Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is calling on Daniel Penny to go after Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg following Penny’s Monday acquittal by a New York City jury in his subway chokehold case.
Bragg failed to convict the 26-year-old Penny for criminally negligent homicide in relation to an incident in which Penny confronted and subdued Jordan Neely, a homeless man who was high on drugs and threatening passengers in a New York subway car in May 2023 before Penny subdued him. Following Penny’s acquittal, Cruz urged the former U.S. Marine to sue Bragg for malicious prosecution in a statement obtained exclusively by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“Alvin Bragg is an absolute catastrophe. First, he indicted Donald Trump in a partisan case, and then he indicted Daniel Penny for saving the lives of other subway passengers from a deranged lunatic threatening to kill everyone,” Cruz said in the statement. “Penny should sue Bragg fo
Bragg prosecuted President-elect Donald Trump and managed to convict him on 34 felony counts related to an alleged scheme wherein Trump falsified business records as part of a broader effort to “corrupt” the 2016 presidential election. Bragg, whose 2021 district attorney campaign received hundreds of thousands of dollars from left-wing megadonor George Soros via his Color of Change PAC, has also drawn intense scrutiny for being soft on criminals in his capacity as Manhattan’s top law enforcement officer.
Neely had been arrested 42 times before his encounter with Penny and had concerning mental health and substance abuse issues. Many observers and analysts believed that Bragg should have never brought the case against Penny given the circumstances surrounding Neely’s death, including the fact that Neely had not yet died at the time that police officers arrived on the scene.
Andre Zachery, Neely’s father, is suing Penny in civil court for damages related to his son’s death. Notably, Zachery — who reportedly made a violent threat toward one of Penny’s lawyers in the courtroom Monday and stated after the verdict that “the system is rigged” — was mostly absent during Neely’s childhood, according to a 2023 profile of Neely published by New York Magazine.
Featured Image Credit: Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America
