Harris’ Election Law Hire & Daniel Penny's Defense | 10.31.24
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As the election lawfare ramps up, Kamala Harris taps an aggressive Democrat attorney to battle election integrity efforts. Thank God this time we are so much better prepared legally and politically for this lawfare fight than we were in 2020. I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley. It's October 31st. Happy Halloween. And this is Morning Wire.

The election hinges on a handful of battleground states, perhaps none so crucial as Pennsylvania. We hear from a focus group of voters from the Keystone State. I know way too many people who are not going to vote this election cycle. Like I said, my choice is between Trump or nobody. And we talked to the attorney for Daniel Pinney about their strategy for his defense.

This case is not about heroics. We're not trying to put Danny Penny on some sort of pedestal anymore than we're trying to vilify Jordan Neely. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.

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at B-E-A-M dot com slash wire and use code wire at checkout. That's shop at B-E-A-M dot com slash wire. Use code wire for up to 50% off. Early voting is already underway in several states and high stakes legal battles have already begun, including Democrats and Republicans fighting it out in courts over the GOP's election integrity efforts.

Here with a look at the man behind much of the Democrats' legal efforts is Daily Wire deputy managing editor Tim Rice. Hey, Tim. So Mark Elias is now heading up some of the Democrats' election-related litigation. First, what can you tell us about him?

Well, John, Elias is who Democrats call when they want to win and don't really care how they do it. He's known for his ruthless tactics and willingness to win at all costs. If a Democratic presidential candidate is challenging election results, you can bet Elias is involved. He repped Hillary Clinton's campaign in 2020, and Kamala Harris has now tapped him for her campaign's legal team.

Elias has suffered a number of high profile defeats and career setbacks since 2020, most notably last year when both the Biden campaign and the DNC cut ties with him and his firm over their aggressive approach. So now that he's back in the fold, Republicans are expecting him to pull out all the stops.

And what have we seen so far from him and the Democrats on their various legal fronts? So far, they're focused on fighting Republican efforts to boost election integrity. Here's Elias last week on MSNBC boasting about how Republicans are losing election integrity lawsuits.

The first thing we are seeing is a mass effort by Republicans to flood the courts with frivolous litigation to try to say so chaos. But let's be clear, though there have been a record number of lawsuits filed, though there have been a record number of lawsuits by Republicans filed, they have also suffered a record number of defeats.

Now, Elias describes these cases as frivolous, but really, we're talking about decisions that could fundamentally change how the election works. The Supreme Court just ruled that Virginia could continue purging non-citizens from voter rolls after a lower court blocked that effort. Just yesterday, Republicans won a lawsuit to extend early voting in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, after video surfaced of a cop seemingly shutting voting lines down early.

Republicans are petitioning the Supreme Court to overturn the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's ruling that people who submit invalid absentee ballots would be allowed to vote again in person.

And Elias's firm won possibly the biggest election case of the cycle so far when the Nevada Supreme Court ruled that mail-in ballots must be counted three days after the election, even if they don't have postmarks showing they were mailed before the deadline. Yeah. So potentially very consequential rulings here. What do Republicans have to say about all this?

Well, it's a big enough issue that former Trump adviser Steve Bannon dedicated a whole segment to Elias on the first podcast he recorded after leaving prison. During that segment, the Article 3 Project's Michael Davis sounded the alarm over the ramifications of the Elias-led legal campaign. We need to win this thing decisively on November 5th by three or four points, because if we don't, the Democrats, led by Mark Elias, who is a satirist,

savage attorney, the best attorney out there on election integrity. They're going to try to do everything they can to prevent Trump from getting inaugurated on January 20th. Of course, we haven't even gotten to election day yet, so we can expect to see an even more frantic pace for the legal challenges. And Americans shouldn't be surprised if we see yet more cases even after the polls close. Many people bracing for some bruising battles ahead for sure. Tim, thanks for reporting. Anytime.

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Polling finds that Trump and Harris are neck and neck in the all-important battleground state of Pennsylvania. A new focus group exclusively reported by The Daily Wire suggests that both candidates have work to do to secure a win in the Keystone State.

Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham is here now to break down their responses. So Megan, just to start, can you quickly give us the methodology for this focus group? So this was an exclusive focus group for the Daily Wire that was conducted by Signal. And that's a polling and political analytics firm that's frequently recognized in outlets like the New York Times for its accuracy.

And I do want to stress at the top that this is, like most focus groups, very small. So it doesn't have the same weight as, say, a scientific poll. But the group consisted of seven Pennsylvania swing voters not committed to a candidate yet.

And they say that they're particularly concerned about the economy. And they all happen to reside in the two counties that are known among election analysts as the state's bellwether counties. Those are Erie and Northampton. And they're known as bellwethers because for the last four presidential elections, those two counties have swung to different parties. And in each one, they voted with the winner. So Obama in 2008 and 2012, Trump in 2016.

and Biden in 2020. Perfect record. Now, these voters were particularly focused on the economy. What were some of their specific concerns?

Well, no surprise. Inflation was mentioned most frequently, more than 40 times in a two-hour session. What matters to me is when I go to the grocery store, I can't afford to buy groceries for my family. You know what I mean? I have to pull from my savings. That's what matters to me. Taxes also came up a lot. Most agreed that Democrats targeting billionaires doesn't really impress them, but several did voice approval for Trump's economic

proposals. I don't care what corporations do or how they're taxed or how billionaires are taxed. You start doing stuff like getting rid of my taxes on overtime. Now you've got my attention. You know, getting rid of taxes on tips,

My brother works off tips. That gets my attention. The group was also very concerned about government spending and the national debt. Several people, including, interestingly, those who said they're leaning Harris, said they want to see less American wealth going to foreign aid. And of course, that's an issue that Trump has been hammering. In fact, this was one who said she leans Harris.

We need to find a way to get rid of our debt and paying it down, such as calling in all the loans we've given to foreign nations recently. Another added this. I mean, I'm on board with not blowing absolute shed loads of money on stuff overseas. I mean, I could do with a few less billion dollar missiles going to other countries.

As for Harris's plan to address inflation through price controls, no one was in favor of that. So against price controls, against spending money on overseas conflicts, it sounds like this should be good news for Trump.

Well, certainly on some levels it was, but I can tell you that I watched the full two-hour session and I did hear some alarm bells for Team Trump. When asked to describe what animal comes to mind when they think of him, he got mostly unflattering comparisons.

One said peacock, and this was why. Like everything he does is based on how does it make him look and he has to look good. So whether he perpetuates lies, whether he has to make things up, as long as it makes him look good, then that's what's going to be said.

And then another described him as a bull in a china shop. Overall, I would say that the theme was that the participants seemed to align with Trump's policies, but they do have some issues with his personality. That said, when asked what Animal Harris reminds them of, more than one person tagged her with that most dreaded of labels that no candidate wants to hear. Chameleon. Chameleon, okay. Why chameleon? Because she seems to be able to shift in any direction as needed.

Who else? That's the first thing that popped into my head, too. And this was why. Stop being so flip floppy so that people actually know where you stand on issues and they can trust that you're going to do what you say you're going to do. So, again, this is a very small sample size of voters here, just seven. But I do think it gives us a sense of the conversations that are still being had in Pennsylvania. Well, not much more time for the candidates to convince them. Megan, thanks for reporting. Anytime.

Jury selection is underway in the trial of Marine veteran Daniel Penny. The 25-year-old has been charged in the death of Jordan Neely. Penny restrained Neely on the subway last year after Neely threatened other passengers. Daily Wire reporter Amanda Prestigiacomo got an inside look at the coming trial during an interview with Penny's attorney, Tom Kenneth. Hello, Amanda. So big picture, what sort of strategy will we see from the defense?

Well, the defense will stand by their client's character for sure. That's what kind of told me. But he also said they will not try to portray Penny as a hero any more than they will vilify Neely. What is going to be vital, though, is getting the jury to understand that what happened on that subway car was not a

Not the typical erratic subway behavior New Yorkers are unfortunately used to experiencing. This was far more threatening. Kenneth also explained to me what exactly the prosecution is going to have to convince the jury of, something he said he's confident they won't be able to do based on the facts of the case.

They're not intent-based offenses. The prosecution is going to have to prove not only that our client, Danny Penny, caused Mr. Neely's death, but that he foresaw the risk of death and consciously disregarded it. That is a substantial threshold and one that we don't think the prosecution is going to be able to establish in this case because that's simply not what happened.

Now, we know Neely had a history of mental health issues and criminal arrests before this tragedy unfolded. How will that play into the case?

Well, again, Kenneth said the defense does not want to vilify Neely. Penny's team has been pretty open that they feel the state failed Neely, actually. But what he did say was that the details of what was going on with Neely at the time of the incident, that's what's going to be important to convey to the jury so they know what Penny and the other passengers were experiencing in those moments. To that point, I did ask Kenneth about the K2 that was found in Neely's system, which was shown in a toxicology report ordered by the state.

K2 is a synthetic drug sometimes called spice, and it's been linked to psychosis. Ken have said that he believes the state will have to disclose this during the trial.

It's very important that the jury be aware of that drug and the effects of that drug because it affects behaviors, particularly when Mr. Neely was likely in the midst of a paranoid, schizophrenic, psychotic episode, which the evidence suggests where Neely was and high on K2R. It's very relevant for the jury to understand that because it goes to the fear that

that my client felt that the other passengers felt and why, as I said earlier in the interview, this was something different than the sort of, you know, erratic behavior one might associate with, you know, just another day on the New York City subway system. Now, there's been a narrative from legacy media that this incident was about race merely because Penny is white and Neely is black. Does the defense think that will actually be a theme in the trial?

I asked Kenneth about that, and he basically said that would be a huge mistake by the prosecution. I don't think it's going to be something that you're going to inject in a cave. If they tried to do that, they would probably bump themselves into a mistrial. This was not a racial incident. My client has no history of any racial animus.

I also asked him if he thought Penny would take the stand. That's something a lot of people are wondering about. He said his client is certainly willing to do that and said Penny would be a great witness based on his character and his ability to recount the facts of the case. But Kenneth did stress that the burden here is, of course, on the prosecution.

We're now into the second week of jury selection for this trial. And of the six jurors that have already been selected, two of them say they've been harassed on the New York City subway. Certainly a vital aspect of this case. We'll keep listeners up to date as all this unfolds. Amanda, thanks for reporting. You're welcome. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back later this afternoon with more news you need to know.

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