As he asks voters to make him Pennsylvania’s subsequent lieutenant governor, Teddy Daniels has promoted himself as an Military battle veteran, a former police officer, and a prosperous businessman. He also, possibly higher than all, wants them to know that he stands with Donald Trump. Daniels’ guidance for the former president has bundled selling conspiracy theories about the final election and submitting online video from the steps of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
What Daniels is not promoting is that, according to court docket files, his private history consists of domestic-abuse allegations, and the law-enforcement career that he’s manufactured a cornerstone of his marketing campaign has a number of major blemishes. Daniels’ ex-spouse claimed in courtroom that he was “physically and mentally abusive” in the course of their marriage and later on harassed her at her place of work, and both equally she and another female have accused him of currently being negligent in paying boy or girl support. Court records expose that through his occupation as an officer he was the matter of an “internal affairs investigation” that concluded he had engaged in “unbecoming conduct” by “providing misleading facts to an investigator” and “using official condition history for individual explanations.” Neighborhood newspaper accounts also reveal that Daniels was suspended and in the long run agreed to separate from a unique law enforcement division in 2010.
Daniels’ political views are extreme, specially his adherence to Trump’s lie that he received the 2020 election and his pledge to revamp an election method in the identify of that falsehood. “I can guarantee the folks of Pennsylvania this, when we get in in ‘22, we are heading to revamp the complete technique for when Trump runs in ‘24. Which is what requirements to materialize,” Daniels declared in a latest job interview on a proper-wing podcast. “That gives us two several years to resolve … the sham election program that they have set in spot.”
But in the present day Republican Occasion, severe does not signify fringe. Inside of the previous year, Daniels has scored primary-time appearances on Fox News and a personal assembly with Trump. As he operates for lieutenant governor, Daniels has the assist of Doug Mastriano, a MAGA-minded legislator and gubernatorial applicant who’s a shut 2nd in early key polling. The key is in May, and as voters weigh regardless of whether to nominate Daniels to be the quantity-two formal in the country’s fifth most-populous state, his individual record merits a shut evaluation.
Daniels declined an interview request from Rolling Stone and declined to remedy a string of written queries about the particular allegations comprehensive in the court docket paperwork, his perspective of the 2020 election, and his activities on Jan. 6. Rather, he despatched Rolling Stone a shorter 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 Phony, and Destructive ALLEGATIONS to check out to defame a wounded combat veteran, embellished law enforcement officer, and leading prospect 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 girl in Maryland whose identity Rolling Stone is withholding. The pair experienced a baby collectively in April 2002, and divided approximately 3 months later. That separation was the starting of a contentious, ten years-long-additionally authorized saga as the pair argued around baby assist and visitation, according to the courtroom data reviewed by Rolling Stone.
As their court battle dragged on, in 2013, the ex-wife questioned the district court docket of Maryland for an purchase of defense citing alleged “domestic violence.” In prepared statements accompanying the petition, Daniels’ ex-wife claimed he was “physically and mentally abusive through marriage” and that he “pushed, kicked, and hit” her, which include an incident the place he allegedly “kicked in” a doorway and still left her forearm “bruised.” The court denied the petition and reported she “could not meet up with the needed burden of proof” about the alleged actual physical abuse a ten years previously. The ex-wife did not react to numerous requests for remark.
However, the ex-wife’s petition for safety documented allegations of Daniels harassing her in 2013 by calling the medical center in which she labored to accuse her of violating a “court order.” The petition involved messages Daniels purportedly wrote to a normal e mail tackle for the president of the hospital to demand his ex-wife’s get hold of info. “Could you you should forward me her office selection? I am filing papers up coming 7 days for her to be served by the Sheriff at work since I have no other make contact with info,” Daniels wrote. “I do not would like her or the clinic any community shame and ideally with her business line, points can be worked out before items are brought into the public eye.”
The petition incorporated a stick to up e-mail from the hospital’s director of protection, who “strongly urge[d]” Daniels not to “continue to harass” his ex-wife “at her put of work.”
The publicly obtainable courtroom information reviewed by Rolling Stone did not include any response from Daniels and his attorneys to this alleged workplace harassment. In other court paperwork, Daniels frequently suggested his determination in his dealings with his ex-spouse was to see his boy or girl. Lawyers who represented Daniels and his ex-spouse did not reply to requests for comment.
Daniels’ lawful struggle with his ex-wife was not his initially. In 1999, Daniels sued a female he’d experienced a little one with in 1996 to get custody and visitation rights and get the job done out little one guidance. Throughout the subsequent authorized battle, the woman’s lawyer accused Daniels of having earlier “engaged in carry out which has been threatening” to the lady and designed her come to feel “justifiably unsafe.” The presiding courtroom official rebuffed that line of argument, expressing that the girl experienced previously agreed in a consent buy to Daniels going to their youngster. The female, whose name Rolling Stone is withholding, could not be achieved for comment. Her legal professional declined to comment and reported they had no recollection of the situation from two a long time back.
In both the situations involving his ex-wife and the other woman, Daniels was accused of failing to maintain up with youngster help, the courtroom documents expose. Court documents ensure that Daniels was in “arrears” with child aid to his ex-wife in 2002 and 2006. In court docket documents from 2009, Daniels’ ex-spouse described him as “a chronic offender of steady unsuccessful payments” for boy or girl aid. Daniels’ legal professionals contested this claim. Courtroom documents in the legal combat among Daniels and the lady he experienced a kid with in 1996 reveal he was in arrears on his boy or girl assistance to that woman during 2000 and 2001.
Daniels’ police experience is a central part of his marketing campaign. His web-site features that he “was awarded the accolade of Law Enforcement Officer of the 12 months in 2002.” Daniels declined to solution inquiries about the specifics of the award, including query about the place it was offered and by whom.
Court docket documents and newspaper articles counsel Daniels ran into qualified issues at various police departments through his regulation-enforcement career. Daniels’ ex-spouse presented the courtroom with a pair of paperwork indicating he was disciplined for “unbecoming conduct by furnishing misleading information and facts to an investigator” and “abuse” of “state file for particular reasons” in 1999 when he was an officer with the police division in Bel Air, Maryland. The court docket records, which the ex-wife integrated in her ask for for the order of security, did not give additional detail about the alleged violations or contain a reaction to the accusations from Daniels and his lawyers. Daniels did not deal with precise thoughts about the allegations from Rolling Stone.
According to the elements Daniels’ ex-spouse delivered to the court, he gained a “letter of reprimand” from Bel Air Police Chief Leo Matrangola in December 1999. “Improper behavior is a make a difference of practice,” Matrangola wrote to Daniels. “I would like you to comprehend that any foreseeable future misuse of law enforcement info or untruthfulness will be thought of grounds for termination.” A agent for the Bel Air Police Division did not respond to a request for remark. Matrangola passed away in 2015.
In the 2009 court docket document in which his ex-spouse accused Daniels of failing to provide boy or girl support, she also alleged he was after “FIRED within just 6 months” of getting a job with the police pressure in Douglass Township, Pennsylvania. The data do not mirror regardless of whether Daniels and his legal professional responded to that allegation. Daniels did not react to certain inquiries about the alleged firing. The chief of the Douglass Township Police Division did not right away respond to a request for comment.
Daniels also had difficulties at one more police job, this time with the office in Minersville, Pennsylvania. According to a November, 2010 report in a local paper, Daniels was suspended from that section in excess of unspecified allegations in August of that year. The suspension was prolonged soon after a private hearing, and once more subsequent a subsequent session of the town council. Daniels left the section via a separation settlement that the council approved that November.
“The allegations that led to the suspension were being not made community,” the regional Pottsville Republican Herald noted, introducing: “The details of the settlement are currently being kept confidential by the council at Daniels’ ask for.” Daniels did not respond to unique issues about his described suspension from the police division in Minersville. The town’s present-day police main did not immediately react to a request for remark.
Along with his legislation-enforcement and navy credentials, Daniels has built his political occupation all-around guidance for Trump. He to start with ran for Congress in 2020, but he misplaced a crowded, contested principal. He started off jogging for Congress yet again in 2022, but he as a substitute jumped into the lieutenant governor’s race past month. Daniels announced the lieutenant-governor marketing campaign soon after Mastriano, the gubernatorial candidate functioning with Daniels’ assistance, introduced his bid for governor.
Mastriano was subpoenaed by the Residence select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on Tuesday, because of to his alleged involvement in a approach to put forward a slate of “alternate electors” to overturn Trump’s decline and general public statements indicating he was “present for the duration of the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.” He and Daniels are component of a wave of GOP candidates who look to have attended the protests against Trump’s election decline that turned violent on Jan. 6, 2021. As the U.S. Capitol was attacked that working day, Daniels seemed to be entrance and centre. He posted a online video showing crowds swarming the constructing that appeared to be shot from the east entrance actions, well within the barricades that have been set up that working day.
“I am here,” he wrote. “God bless our patriots.”
I am in this article. God bless our patriots. pic.twitter.com/RBqNoQkyC2
— Teddy Daniels PA (@TeddyForPA) January 6, 2021
And Daniels has built aid for the broader effort and hard work to challenge Trump’s reduction — and opposition to the investigation of the attack on the Capitol — portion of his campaign. In addition to questioning Trump’s defeat and suggesting he would modify voting systems to assurance potential Republican victory, Daniels appeared on 1 The usa News Network final 12 months, in which he claimed the Property choose committee investigating Jan. 6 “has to prevent instantly.”
Daniels also evidently objects to investigations into his have earlier. In January, soon after he became aware of the reporting for this story, he posted a online video to Facebook, proclaiming the write-up was a set up by possibly the “liberal left” or the “establishment right” because he had “upset the powers to be at a quite, extremely, incredibly large degree.”
“Rolling Stone journal with their unlimited finances is now making ready, exploring, and composing to do a hit piece on me,” he declared in the video, seated beneath an assault rifle and a image of him with Trump. “Who set them up to it? I can notify you this, there’s only two entities out there that loathe the The usa 1st agenda, and it’s the institution appropriate and the liberal left.”
“Every shit rag liberal paper in the state has appear immediately after me,” Daniels explained. “I survived fight. Practically nothing that these guy bun wearing purple-haired sissies can do to me can harm me.”
In the movie, Daniels urged Rolling Stone to “come get some.”
“All suitable shitbag, I know your offer. What do you received? Let’s sit down. Let us meet up with, and go ahead and compose,” Daniels explained. “Rolling Stone, you know how to get hold of me. … I dare you to try out that potent-arm shit with me, due to the fact we will meet up with in person, and it won’t be a superior assembly. I assure you that.”