As he asks voters to make him Pennsylvania’s subsequent lieutenant governor, Teddy Daniels has promoted himself as an Army overcome veteran, a previous police officer, and a successful businessman. He also, maybe higher than all, would like them to know that he stands with Donald Trump. Daniels’ aid for the former president has integrated marketing conspiracy theories about the very last election and posting video from the actions of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
What Daniels is not marketing is that, according to court docket files, his personal historical past features domestic-abuse allegations, and the legislation-enforcement job that he’s made a cornerstone of his campaign has various major blemishes. Daniels’ ex-wife claimed in courtroom that he was “physically and mentally abusive” all through their relationship and later on harassed her at her workplace, and the two she and a different lady have accused him of remaining negligent in having to pay kid support. Courtroom information expose that during his profession as an officer he was the matter of an “internal affairs investigation” that concluded he had engaged in “unbecoming conduct” by “providing deceptive details to an investigator” and “using formal point out file for personalized explanations.” Nearby newspaper accounts also reveal that Daniels was suspended and finally agreed to separate from a different law enforcement division in 2010.
Daniels’ political sights are severe, significantly his adherence to Trump’s lie that he gained the 2020 election and his pledge to revamp an election procedure in the name of that falsehood. “I can promise the men and women of Pennsylvania this, when we get in in ‘22, we are going to revamp the complete procedure for when Trump runs in ‘24. That is what wants to materialize,” Daniels declared in a the latest job interview on a ideal-wing podcast. “That gives us two years to resolve … the sham election method that they have set in position.”
But in the fashionable Republican Bash, serious does not necessarily mean fringe. Within just the earlier year, Daniels has scored prime-time appearances on Fox News and a own assembly with Trump. As he operates for lieutenant governor, Daniels has the aid of Doug Mastriano, a MAGA-minded legislator and gubernatorial prospect who’s a near 2nd in early most important polling. The principal is in May well, and as voters weigh irrespective of whether to nominate Daniels to be the number-two official in the country’s fifth most-populous condition, his private historical past deserves a shut overview.
Daniels declined an interview ask for from Rolling Stone and declined to remedy a string of published thoughts about the distinct allegations thorough in the court paperwork, his watch of the 2020 election, and his functions on Jan. 6. As a substitute, he sent Rolling Stone a short assertion: “Given that the Liberal rag Rolling Stone idolizes the Boston bomber, it is no surprise they’d grasp at non existent straws in printing Untrue, and Malicious ALLEGATIONS to attempt to defame a wounded combat veteran, embellished law enforcement officer, and major candidate in Pennsylvania just like they did to Donald Trump with the Russia Hoax and Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Courtroom.”
In November 2000, Daniels married a lady in Maryland whose identity Rolling Stone is withholding. The pair had a youngster together in April 2002, and divided about 3 months afterwards. That separation was the starting of a contentious, decade-long-plus legal saga as the pair argued more than child assist and visitation, in accordance to the court records reviewed by Rolling Stone.
As their court battle dragged on, in 2013, the ex-spouse requested the district court docket of Maryland for an get of protection citing alleged “domestic violence.” In composed statements accompanying the petition, Daniels’ ex-spouse claimed he was “physically and mentally abusive for the duration of marriage” and that he “pushed, kicked, and hit” her, including an incident where he allegedly “kicked in” a doorway and still left her forearm “bruised.” The court denied the petition and said she “could not meet the required burden of proof” about the alleged physical abuse a ten years before. The ex-wife did not react to various requests for remark.
Even so, the ex-wife’s petition for protection documented allegations of Daniels harassing her in 2013 by calling the medical center where by she worked to accuse her of violating a “court order.” The petition provided messages Daniels purportedly wrote to a general e-mail handle for the president of the healthcare facility to demand from customers his ex-wife’s get hold of information and facts. “Could you you should ahead me her workplace amount? I am submitting papers subsequent week for her to be served by the Sheriff at do the job considering that I have no other make contact with data,” Daniels wrote. “I do not desire her or the clinic any general public humiliation and with any luck , with her place of work line, points can be labored out just before issues are introduced into the community eye.”
The petition integrated a adhere to up email from the hospital’s director of security, who “strongly urge[d]” Daniels not to “continue to harass” his ex-wife “at her location of employment.”
The publicly available courtroom records reviewed by Rolling Stone did not have any reaction from Daniels and his attorneys to this alleged place of work harassment. In other court docket paperwork, Daniels continuously proposed his drive in his dealings with his ex-spouse was to see his child. Legal professionals who represented Daniels and his ex-wife did not reply to requests for remark.
Daniels’ legal battle with his ex-spouse was not his initially. In 1999, Daniels sued a woman he’d experienced a child with in 1996 to get custody and visitation legal rights and do the job out little one guidance. For the duration of the subsequent lawful fight, the woman’s law firm accused Daniels of getting beforehand “engaged in carry out which has been threatening” to the woman and designed her feel “justifiably unsafe.” The presiding courtroom official rebuffed that line of argument, saying that the girl had earlier agreed in a consent get to Daniels visiting their kid. The girl, whose name Rolling Stone is withholding, could not be arrived at for remark. Her lawyer declined to comment and reported they experienced no recollection of the case from two decades ago.
In the two the scenarios involving his ex-wife and the other lady, Daniels was accused of failing to preserve up with kid guidance, the courtroom documents expose. Court documents verify that Daniels was in “arrears” with boy or girl aid to his ex-spouse in 2002 and 2006. In courtroom files from 2009, Daniels’ ex-wife described him as “a serious offender of constant unsuccessful payments” for child assist. Daniels’ lawyers contested this assert. Courtroom documents in the authorized fight between Daniels and the lady he experienced a child with in 1996 expose he was in arrears on his kid guidance to that girl through 2000 and 2001.
Daniels’ police encounter is a central component of his campaign. His site boasts that he “was awarded the accolade of Law Enforcement Officer of the 12 months in 2002.” Daniels declined to response inquiries about the particulars of the award, including dilemma about in which it was introduced and by whom.
Court data and newspaper articles or blog posts advise Daniels ran into experienced trouble at several law enforcement departments during his legislation-enforcement career. Daniels’ ex-spouse presented the courtroom with a pair of documents indicating he was disciplined for “unbecoming perform by providing deceptive information and facts to an investigator” and “abuse” of “state history for particular reasons” in 1999 although he was an officer with the police section in Bel Air, Maryland. The courtroom information, which the ex-spouse integrated in her ask for for the purchase of defense, did not deliver even further detail about the alleged violations or include things like a response to the accusations from Daniels and his attorneys. Daniels did not handle specific questions about the allegations from Rolling Stone.
According to the resources Daniels’ ex-wife furnished to the courtroom, he acquired a “letter of reprimand” from Bel Air Law enforcement Chief Leo Matrangola in December 1999. “Improper actions is a subject of behavior,” Matrangola wrote to Daniels. “I would like you to fully grasp that any long run misuse of law enforcement data or untruthfulness will be thought of grounds for termination.” A consultant for the Bel Air Police Section did not respond to a ask for for comment. Matrangola handed away in 2015.
In the 2009 courtroom document in which his ex-wife accused Daniels of failing to present child assist, she also alleged he was after “FIRED within just 6 months” of taking a position with the law enforcement pressure in Douglass Township, Pennsylvania. The documents do not reflect no matter whether Daniels and his legal professional responded to that allegation. Daniels did not react to specific questions about the alleged firing. The chief of the Douglass Township Law enforcement Department did not promptly react to a request for remark.
Daniels also experienced difficulties at an additional law enforcement work, this time with the office in Minersville, Pennsylvania. According to a November, 2010 report in a nearby paper, Daniels was suspended from that department in excess of unspecified allegations in August of that year. The suspension was extended following a private listening to, and yet again adhering to a subsequent session of the town council. Daniels left the division through a separation arrangement that the council approved that November.
“The allegations that led to the suspension were not designed community,” the local Pottsville Republican Herald claimed, including: “The details of the agreement are becoming kept private by the council at Daniels’ ask for.” Daniels did not respond to particular questions about his claimed suspension from the police division in Minersville. The town’s latest law enforcement main did not promptly react to a request for remark.
Together with his legislation-enforcement and military qualifications, Daniels has developed his political career all-around assist for Trump. He initial ran for Congress in 2020, but he lost a crowded, contested main. He begun jogging for Congress once more in 2022, but he as a substitute jumped into the lieutenant governor’s race previous month. Daniels declared the lieutenant-governor marketing campaign soon after Mastriano, the gubernatorial applicant managing with Daniels’ guidance, released his bid for governor.
Mastriano was subpoenaed by the Household pick out committee investigating the Jan. 6 assault on Tuesday, thanks to his alleged involvement in a approach to set ahead a slate of “alternate electors” to overturn Trump’s loss and general public statements indicating he was “present during the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.” He and Daniels are component of a wave of GOP candidates who appear to have attended the protests from Trump’s election reduction that turned violent on Jan. 6, 2021. As the U.S. Capitol was attacked that day, Daniels seemed to be front and centre. He posted a video displaying crowds swarming the constructing that appeared to be shot from the east front actions, nicely inside the barricades that ended up set up that day.
“I am right here,” he wrote. “God bless our patriots.”
I am listed here. God bless our patriots. pic.twitter.com/RBqNoQkyC2
— Teddy Daniels PA (@TeddyForPA) January 6, 2021
And Daniels has created support for the broader energy to obstacle Trump’s reduction — and opposition to the investigation of the assault on the Capitol — component of his campaign. In addition to questioning Trump’s defeat and suggesting he would improve voting systems to guarantee potential Republican victory, Daniels appeared on Just one The united states Information Network very last 12 months, exactly where he reported the House pick committee investigating Jan. 6 “has to quit straight away.”
Daniels also apparently objects to investigations into his individual earlier. In January, soon after he turned knowledgeable of the reporting for this tale, he posted a video clip to Facebook, saying the posting was a set up by either the “liberal left” or the “establishment right” for the reason that he experienced “upset the powers to be at a quite, really, quite higher level.”
“Rolling Stone magazine with their unrestricted spending plan is now getting ready, looking into, and crafting to do a strike piece on me,” he declared in the video clip, seated beneath an assault rifle and a photo of him with Trump. “Who place them up to it? I can explain to you this, there is only two entities out there that hate the America Initially agenda, and it is the institution suitable and the liberal left.”
“Every shit rag liberal paper in the country has arrive immediately after me,” Daniels reported. “I survived battle. Absolutely nothing that these man bun donning purple-haired sissies can do to me can damage me.”
In the online video, Daniels urged Rolling Stone to “come get some.”
“All ideal shitbag, I know your deal. What do you got? Let us sit down. Let us satisfy, and go in advance and produce,” Daniels stated. “Rolling Stone, you know how to make contact with me. … I dare you to consider that powerful-arm shit with me, for the reason that we will meet up with in particular person, and it will not be a good conference. I assure you that.”