Luigi Mangione to be arraigned Friday on federal charges in UnitedHealthcare CEO's killing
Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old accused of fatally shooting UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City last December, is set to be arraigned on federal charges on Friday.
Mangione was indicted last week by a federal grand jury in Manhattan on four charges, including stalking and murder through the use of a firearm — the latter of which carries a maximum sentence of death.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said she intends to pursue the death penalty in the case.
"Mangione's murder of Brian Thompson — an innocent man and father of two young children — was a premeditated, cold-blooded assassination that shocked America," Bondi said in a statement earlier this month. "After careful consideration, I have directed federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty in this case as we carry out President Trump's agenda to stop violent crime and Make America Safe Again."
In late December, Mangione was indicted on 11 state charges in New York, including murder and terrorism. He pleaded not guilty.
Mangione is also facing state charges in Pennsylvania, where he was arrested following a weeklong manhunt. The charges there include possession of an unlicensed firearm, forgery and providing false identification to police. He was extradited to New York before entering a plea.
He is being held without bond at Metropolitan Detention Center Brooklyn, where Sean "Diddy" Combs and other high-profile defendants are also awaiting trial.
Mangione is accused of fatally shooting Thompson on Dec. 4 outside the New York Hilton, where UnitedHealthcare's parent company, UnitedHealth Group, was holding its annual Investor Conference.
According to the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, Mangione arrived in New York City by bus on Nov. 24 and checked into a hostel on the Upper West Side under the name "Mark Rosario," using a fake New Jersey ID.
On the morning of Dec. 4, investigators say, Mangione left the hostel around 5:30 a.m. ET and traveled to midtown near the Hilton hotel.
As Thompson was walking up to the hotel, Mangione took out a 9mm, 3D-printed ghost gun equipped with a 3D-printed suppressor and shot him once in the back and once in the leg.
Mangione fled the scene on a bicycle, setting off a five-day, nationwide manhunt.
He was arrested at a McDonald's in Altoona, Pa., on Dec. 9 with the same fake New Jersey identification and the 3D-printed ghost gun, as well as a handwritten document that police said appeared to be a 'manifesto.'
Police said Mangione's fingerprints matched those collected by the NYPD on a water bottle and a KIND bar wrapper recovered near the scene of the shooting and on a cellphone found in an alley near the hotel.
Authorities have yet to officially identify a motive in Thompson's slaying.
According to the federal complaint unsealed in December, the FBI said that writings in the handwritten notebook Mangione had with him when he was arrested showed his "hostility towards the health insurance industry and wealthy executives in particular." In one entry, Mangione wrote that "the target is insurance," according to the FBI.
NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny previously told reporters that there did not appear to be "any specific threats" mentioned in the manifesto, but "it does seem that he has some ill will toward corporate America.'
Mangione was not a customer of UnitedHealthcare, but police said he had identified the company as one of the largest corporations in America in the document.
'So that's possibly why he targeted that company,' Kenny later said in an interview with NBC New York.
Police also reportedly recovered shell casings at the scene with the words "deny," "defend" and "depose" written on them – echoing the title of a 2010 book, 'Delay, Deny, Defend,' that was highly critical of the insurance industry and describes a strategy of rejecting claims.
According to the federal complaint unsealed, the FBI said that writings in the handwritten notebook Mangione had with him when he was arrested showed his "hostility towards the health insurance industry and wealthy executives in particular."
The killing sparked a national conversation about the U.S. health care system — with people sharing stories about denied insurance claims — and made Mangione a hero in the eyes of some who share his apparent outrage over corporate greed.
At a procedural court hearing in lower Manhattan in February, dozens of people wearing 'Free Luigi' shirts and carrying homemade signs braved frigid temperatures for hours to show their support for Mangione.
'I don't condone murder, but what he did and its focus on UnitedHealthcare has really brought to life how our health care system is broken,' Shane Solger, one of the demonstrators outside the hearing, told Yahoo News. 'I'm here because the way that our health care system is designed right now hurts people. This is kind of a protest of our health care system.'
Mangione was born on May 6, 1998 in Towson, Md., and raised by a prominent Maryland family. His grandfather was a real estate developer who owned country clubs in Maryland. And he is the cousin of Maryland Republican State Delegate Nino Mangione.
He graduated in 2016 as a valedictorian from Gilman School, a private all-boys school in Baltimore. Mangione then attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated in 2020 with a dual bachelor's degree in computer engineering (BSE) and a master's degree in computer and information science (MSE).
Mangione's last known address was in Honolulu.
Some of the people who knew him in Hawaii said he told them he had been suffering from back pain following spinal surgery.
According to friends and family, Mangione stopped communicating with them about six months before Thompson's killing.
Thompson worked for UnitedHealthcare, the nation's largest private health insurer, for 20 years.
Thompson was named CEO in April 2021, after having previously served as the CEO of UnitedHealthcare's government programs, including Medicare & Retirement, according to his company profile. He joined the company in 2004.
Before that, Thompson was a practicing CPA at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, serving as a manager in the transaction advisory services group of the company's audit practice, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Thompson earned a bachelor's degree in Business Administration and Accounting from the University of Iowa. He graduated in 1997.
He was a husband and father of two children.
Thompson lived in Maple Grove, Minn., a suburb of Minneapolis.
His wife, Paulette Thompson, told NBC News that her husband told her he had been receiving threats.
"There had been some threats," she said. "I don't know details. I just know that he said there were some people that had been threatening him."
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Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
Kristi Noem: the made-for-TV official executing Trump's mass deportations
Little more than a year ago, Kristi Noem's political prospects appeared to be in freefall. The then South Dakota governor was criss-crossing the country on an ill-fated book tour, widely seen, at least initially, as an audition to be Donald Trump's running mate. Instead, Noem found herself on the defensive – a position Trump never likes to be in – after revealing in her memoir that she had shot the family's 'untrainable' hunting dog, a 14-month-old wirehair pointer named Cricket. Even in Trumpworld, where controversy can be a form of currency, the disclosure shocked. In the weeks that followed, she faded from contention and the breathless veepstakes rumor mill moved on. By the time Trump selected JD Vance as his vice-presidential nominee, Noem's path forward on the national stage was unclear. But a year is a lifetime in politics, the saying goes. It is even more true today, in Trump's warp-speed Washington, where Noem now leads the sprawling department at the heart of the president's hardline vision to carry out the largest deportation campaign in American history. Since assuming office as the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in January, Noem has played a starring role in the second Trump administration, executing the White House's immigration agenda with fierce loyalty, Trumpian defiance and a made-for-TV approach that supporters have hailed as a full-throttle push to 'Make America Safe Again' and critics have condemned as theatrical posturing with cruel – and possibly unlawful – consequences. The department oversees a vast portfolio, with a workforce of 260,000 people spread across 22 federal agencies, including the Secret Service, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) and the nation's premier cybersecurity agency. Yet immigration has dominated her tenure. In her first days in office, Noem, 53, revoked several Biden-era programs and policies – among them initiatives crafted in response to a global rise in migration that brought record numbers of people to the US-Mexico border and helped seed the political ground for Trump's comeback in 2024. She has also deputized personnel from across federal agencies and enlisted local law enforcement to expand the administration's deportation operations. And she has been front and center in many of the administration's most closely watched legal clashes, including in the case of a Maryland man mistakenly deported to a prison in El Salvador. On Friday, in a stunning reversal by the administration, he was returned to the US, where he now faces criminal charges. 'Justice awaits this Salvadoran man,' Noem declared on X. Away from the department's Washington headquarters, Noem has embraced the role of high-profile surrogate. She has toured the southern border on horseback, wearing a cowboy hat, and on an ATV, camera in tow. During a recent international tour, Noem met with world leaders, served a Memorial Day meal to coast guard personnel at a base in Bahrain, and squeezed in a camel ride. While in Poland, she delivered a highly unusual endorsement of the nationalist presidential candidate, Karol Nawrocki. 'Donald Trump is a strong leader for us, but you have an opportunity to have just as strong of a leader in Karol, if you make him the leader of this country,' she said at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Warsaw. (He won.) But it has not been entirely smooth sailing. During a recent Senate hearing, Noem botched a question about habeas corpus – the legal right, guaranteed in the constitution, that allows people detained by the government to challenge their detention. When Noem claimed habeas corpus was the president's 'constitutional right' to deport people, the Democratic senator of New Hampshire Maggie Hassan, interjected: 'That's incorrect.' Habeas corpus, the senator countered sternly, 'was the foundational right that separates free societies like America from police states like North Korea'. Such is the trajectory of an administration official in Trump's 'central casting' cabinet – a camera-ready cast that includes Fox News personalities, a wrestling impresario and a Kennedy – all of whom serve at the pleasure of a president who prizes public displays of adulation and, perhaps above all else, unblinking execution of his agenda. DHS maintains that under Noem's stewardship, the department has returned to its 'core mission of securing the homeland'. 'The world is hearing our message,' said DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, pointing to record-low border crossings since Trump took office. 'Thanks to President Trump and Secretary Noem, we have the most secure border in history.' But critics say her approach is a striking departure from the way past secretaries have led the department. 'The secretary went before Congress and gave an incorrect definition of habeas corpus,' said Nayna Gupta, policy director at the nonpartisan immigration advocacy group the American Immigration Council. 'That level of incompetence paired with the political theater, I think, is quite distinct from prior administrations.' *** Noem's first months on the job have played out like a rolling production, broadcast across the official social media accounts of the homeland security secretary. Noem, dressed in tactical gear, accompanied agents on a pre-dawn raid in New York, live-tweeting the operation as it unfolded. In February, she toured a nascent tent camp at Guantánamo Bay erected as part of the administration's costly – and controversial – mission to detain people at the US navy base in south-eastern Cuba. In April, Chaya Raichik, the far-right activist behind the LibsofTikTok account, joined Noem for a 'sting operation' in Phoenix. In a social media post, a flak jacket-clad Noem cheered the arrests of 'Human traffickers. Drug Smugglers. 18th Street Gang members' while toting a semi-automatic rifle pointed toward an agent's head. 'Kristi Noem doesn't know how to hold a gun or run the Department of Homeland Security,' the Arizona senator Ruben Gallego, a Democrat who served as a lance corporal in the US Marines, chided on X. At a recent Senate hearing, Noem defended her travel, saying that her on-the-ground presence 'meant the world' to staff and personnel after four years of what she has described as neglect by Biden administration officials. But even allies have occasionally winced at the pageantry. Conservative media personality Megyn Kelly said Noem was doing an 'amazing' job protecting the homeland but, on an episode of her eponymous podcast, begged the secretary not to 'cosplay Ice agent'. The former Fox News host, gesturing to her own cascading tresses and studio make-up, said of Noem: 'She looks like I look right now, but she's out in the field with her gun being like: 'We're gonna go kick some ass.'' 'Just stop trying to glamorize the mission,' Kelly advised. Noem has long been deliberate about shaping her public image. As governor in 2019, she installed a 'six-figure TV studio' in the basement of South Dakota's capitol building, according to a local news investigation. (Noem's office told the outlet the expense was far less than flying to the nearest studio for her frequent Fox News appearances.) In her second term, she starred in a series of workforce recruitment ads, appearing as a nurse, a plumber and a highway patrol officer in an effort to attract job seekers to the state. 'Kristi Noem, you might say, is very public-facing,' said Jon Schaff, a political science professor at Northern State University in South Dakota, who has observed Noem's political career. 'She likes the celebrity aspects of politics.' It's a trait she shares with her boss, the former host of The Apprentice. As his homeland security chief, Noem said Trump asked her to cut a series of ads to amplify the administration's message. She obliged. In February, DHS launched a multimillion-dollar international ad campaign in which Noem warns undocumented immigrants living in the country to 'leave now' or the government will 'hunt you down'. DHS says the ads have had an impact. While the department did not provide statistics, Tom Homan, the border czar, recently told reporters that at least 8,500 people have self-deported through the government's 'CBP Home' app and estimated that 'thousands' more were leaving without notice. In March, Noem delivered the message in person. Amid a legal standoff over the administration's decision to deport scores of Venezuelans to El Salvador under an 18th-century wartime law, the secretary traveled to the country. Wearing combat boots, an Ice baseball cap and a $50,000 Rolex on her wrist, she toured a notorious Salvadorian prison. Standing in front of a cell packed with prisoners bare from the waist up, Noem spoke into the camera: 'If you come to our country illegally, this is one of the consequences you could face.' On Wednesday, a federal judge ruled that the men sent to El Salvador must be given a chance to challenge their removals, finding that many had likely been imprisoned on the basis of 'flimsy, even frivolous, accusations' of gang membership. DHS said it provides adequate due process to all deportees. In public statements, officials at DHS and the White House have repeated that their mass-removal effort targets the 'worst of the worst'. 'We are focusing on dangerous criminals,' Noem said during a Sunday appearance on Fox News. 'We are going out there and ensuring that people that repeatedly break our laws are being held accountable.' But the far-reaching campaign has ensnared legal residents, children with cancer and even US citizens. In multiple instances, the administration has blamed 'administrative errors' for deporting Salvadorians who had court orders protecting them from removal. This week, the government returned to the US a Guatemalan man wrongfully deported to Mexico. 'The administration wants to project fear and cruelty, with no limits as to how far they will go,' said Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of the pro-immigration advocacy group America's Voice. 'It's working in the sense that it is creating fear. There are pockets of communities that are changing their whole lives to adjust to the fact that our government is now using all its levers to go after immigrants.' *** A self-described 'farm kid' who took over her family's ranch after her father's sudden death, Noem catapulted to national prominence during the Covid pandemic. As governor of South Dakota, she mirrored Trump's handling of the virus, denouncing mask mandates and stay-at-home orders even as her state struggled, at times mightily, to contain its spread. Related:US judge temporarily halts deportation of Colorado fire attack suspect's family In 2020, Noem feted Trump in South Dakota with a star-spangled Independence Day celebration. It was then that Noem memorably gifted him a 4ft replica of Mount Rushmore that depicted his likeness alongside the faces of the four presidents carved into the granite over the Black Hills of South Dakota. 'At that point, she went all in and being Maga really became a part of her image,' Schaff said. In the years that followed, Noem worked studiously to burnish her national profile, becoming a regular presence in conservative media. She adopted Trump's rhetoric, especially on border security. Despite South Dakota's considerable distance from the US-Mexico border – roughly 1,000 miles (1,600km) north – Noem made the issue a top priority. 'South Dakota is directly affected by this invasion,' she declared in an address last year. In 2021, Noem deployed South Dakota national guard troops to Texas to assist with the state's border enforcement efforts. Yet residents recall that she did not deploy them to help recovery efforts after historic summer floods in the state. Until recently, Noem was banned from setting foot on tribal lands in her own state, after accusing tribal leaders of complicity with drug cartels – an allegation they strongly deny. During her Senate confirmation hearing in January, held days before Trump was sworn in, Democrats questioned Noem's credentials for leading the vast department responsible for border enforcement, disaster response and federal protection. She acknowledged her nomination may have come as a 'bit of a surprise'. But, Noem said, she had asked Trump directly for the position because it was his 'No 1 priority'. The job, she said, required someone 'strong enough' to carry out the president's immigration agenda. So far, she has proven to be a faithful executor, carving out a role that is part enforcer-in-chief, part high-wattage messenger. In an interview earlier this year, the secretary vowed to leverage the 'broad and extensive' authorities of her office to carry out Trump's immigration crackdown. With Noem at the helm, DHS has targeted blue states and cities over their sanctuary city policies, escalated the administration's feud with Harvard by moving to block the university from admitting international students, and departed from longstanding precedent to allow immigration enforcement in sensitive locations, such as places of worship, schools and hospitals. In visceral scenes, masked Ice agents in plain clothes have arrested foreign students and academics on the streets. Internally, Noem has administered polygraph tests to uncover leaks to the press about upcoming immigration raids. She works with Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff and chief architect of Trump's immigration strategy, as well as 'border czar' Homan, both empowered by the president to help achieve the president's deportation goals. Related: Supreme court allows White House to revoke temporary protected status of many migrants Though Noem frequently touts the administration's success removing, in the secretary's words, 'dirt bags' and 'sickos', the White House has expressed disappointment with the pace of deportations. In a tense meeting with immigration officials last month, Noem and Miller announced an aggressive new target: they demanded federal agents more than triple their arrest figures from earlier this year to 3,000 people a day. Internal emails obtained by the Guardian show senior officials at Ice have instructed staff to 'turn the creative knob up to 11' as the agency scrambles to ramp up arrests. On Tuesday, Ice reportedly detained more than 2,200 people in a single day – an agency record. Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement that the president was 'thankful for Secretary Noem's partnership in fulfilling one of his most important promises to the American people: deporting illegal aliens'. She continued: 'The Trump administration takes this promise seriously and will continue working to supercharge the pace of deportations and Make America safe again.' *** As the Trump administration turns to increasingly aggressive tactics, federal courts are pushing back, with Noem's DHS at the center of the legal firestorm. In a ruling last month, a federal judge found DHS had 'unquestionably' violated a court order on deportations to third countries. In response to the growing number of challenges, Noem has largely channeled the president's defiant posture. 'Suck it,' she gloated on X, after a lawsuit against the department involving detained migrants was voluntarily dismissed. While courts have hindered Trump's mass-removal effort, the supreme court handed the administration a major victory last week, temporarily allowing the US to strip provisional legal protections from hundreds of thousands of immigrants who left dangerous and unstable countries, potentially exposing them to deportation. On Wednesday, Trump unveiled a sweeping new travel ban targeting 12 countries, many of them majority-Muslim or African. He said the timing was spurred by a recent attack at an event in Boulder, Colorado, honoring Israeli hostages, for which an Egyptian national was charged. In a video posted on social media, Noem announced that US immigration authorities had taken the suspect's family into federal custody. Within 24 hours, a federal judge blocked their deportation, citing constitutional concerns and warning that their swift removal could violate their due process. 'The actions of this secretary have been manifestly and almost universally determined to be unlawful and unconstitutional,' said Paul Rosenzweig, a former deputy assistant secretary for policy at the DHS. Noem, he said, seemed to be operating on 'political basis alone,' reorienting the department around Trump's priorities. 'This isn't working like it's supposed to,' he said. On Capitol Hill, congressional Republicans are racing to boost the department's efforts by delivering Trump's 'big, beautiful bill', which includes tens of billions of dollars for mass deportations, detention facilities and construction of the border wall. House Republicans, who zealously investigated – and ultimately impeached – Noem's predecessor, Alejandro Mayorkas, have so far shown little appetite for serious oversight inquiries of Trump's cabinet officials. But outside of Washington, public concern is rising. A recent survey found nearly half of Americans believe the administration's deportation polices have 'gone too far'. If Republicans lose the House in next year's midterms, Noem's leadership of DHS would likely face much tougher congressional scrutiny. One Democrat, the representative Delia Ramirez, has already called for Noem's resignation. 'The theatrics of terror and erosion of our constitutional rights are daily DHS violations under Secretary Noem,' Ramirez, who sits on the House homeland security committee, said. Yet the secretary, now firmly re-established at the center of Trump's orbit, appears undeterred. Her embrace of the spotlight – and unflinching execution of Trump's vision – has some wondering whether she's looking even farther ahead, perhaps to 2028, where the battle to become Trump's heir is already taking shape. 'Past secretaries of DHS have wanted to be, not seen, but heard,' Rosenzweig said. 'I'll put it another way: Noem is the first DHS secretary who's running for president.'
Washington Post
2 days ago
- Washington Post
An AP discussion on the courts, lawyers and testimony inside the Diddy, Weinstein and Mangione cases
NEW YORK — Julie Walker, AP radio correspondent: We're here to talk about three big cases in New York. Sean "Diddy" Combs charged with sex trafficking and racketeering by the Feds. He pled not guilty. Down the street in state court, Harvey Weinstein's retrial by the Manhattan DA on rape and sex assault charges. He also pled not to guilty. And then there's Luigi Mangione. He's charged by both the state and the Feds with killing United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson and has also pled not guilty. Joining me now, two of the Associated Press reporters covering the cases and the courts, Larry Neumeister and Mike Sisak. And I'm Julie Walker. All right, let's start with Sean 'Diddy' Combs, what's been going on with that trial?
San Francisco Chronicle
2 days ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
An AP discussion on the courts, lawyers and testimony inside the Diddy, Weinstein and Mangione cases
NEW YORK (AP) — Julie Walker, AP radio correspondent: We're here to talk about three big cases in New York. Sean "Diddy" Combs charged with sex trafficking and racketeering by the Feds. He pled not guilty. Down the street in state court, Harvey Weinstein's retrial by the Manhattan DA on rape and sex assault charges. He also pled not to guilty. And then there's Luigi Mangione. He's charged by both the state and the Feds with killing United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson and has also pled not guilty. Joining me now, two of the Associated Press reporters covering the cases and the courts, Larry Neumeister and Mike Sisak. And I'm Julie Walker. All right, let's start with Sean "Diddy" Combs, what's been going on with that trial? Larry Neumeister, AP courts reporter: They're fascinated by a celebrity on trial. And as part of that, I've been trying to figure out what was he really called around his office? Was he called Diddy? Was he call Puff Daddy? Was called he Puff? Was he, called you know, Sean Combs? A lot of the witnesses seem to have called him Puff every day at the office. So that's my first takeaway from the trial. Mike, how about you? Michael Sisak, AP law enforcement reporter: I think it's fascinating that you have Sean Combs on trial at the same time as Harvey Weinstein's retrial, because you have the arc of the #MeToo movement playing out in the entertainment industry and across different aspects of the entertainment industry. Harvey Weinstein's allegations in 2017 really kickstarted the #MeToo movement. He then had his trial in 2020. Now we're sort of on the other side of that arc where it's Sean Combs opening a window into the hip-hop industry, into the music industry, certainly the most famous, most well-known person from that aspect of entertainment, on trial, and you see the media and public attention gravitating to the Combs trial, to the Diddy trial, much more so than the Weinstein retrial, in part because of the fascination with celebrity. NEUMEISTER: And plus, I think with Weinstein, he's convicted out in LA. So, because he's already, you know, going to be in jail, even if he got exonerated at this second trial, he's still sentenced to a long time in prison. SISAK: He has a form of cancer, he has heart issues, he has all of these things that have only gotten worse, his lawyers say, since that first trial. But to your point, Larry, yes, he is convicted in Los Angeles, and the retrial in New York was caused by an appeals court overturning that 2020 conviction. WALKER: So, to sum it up for just one moment, two very different men, but at one point, very powerful, thought to be very untouchable. And I want to get back to both of them, but I want a pivot just for a minute and remind everyone that we're also talking about Luigi Mangione. SISAK: The fascinating thing about the Mangione case is that he could wind up in both courthouses. You have Diddy in the federal courthouse, you have Weinstein in the state courthouse, and Mangione faces murder charges in both the federal jurisdiction and the state jurisdiction. And initially, we thought and were told by prosecutors that the state case would proceed first. Now the state case, the maximum punishment would be life in prison. However, the Trump administration has gone ahead and filed paperwork indicating that they will seek the death penalty in the federal case, that case appears like it will now be the first one out. His next court date in the federal case is not until December. NEUMEISTER: Seeking the death penalty right off the bat adds one year to everything, and probably two to three years in the long run, because everything will get appealed to the hilt, certainly if they found the death-penalty. But the last time I saw in Manhattan them, the prosecutors seeking a death penalty, was in 2001, and it was two guys charged in an attack on two African embassies that like over 100 people. I think it's hard to win a death penalty case in Manhattan. WALKER: Now the other interesting thing is that Luigi Mangione and Sean "Diddy" Combs are in the same jail right now. SISAK: Yeah, Mangione and Combs are both at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, which is a federal jail that has been in the headlines not only because of the celebrity guests there. Sam Bankman-Fried, the cryptocurrency scammer, was also detained there, but also because that jail has a lot of problems. It's the only federal jail in New York City now. They closed the one in Manhattan where Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide. NEUMEISTER: And you know what, we've had a lot of celebrities appear in the federal courts in Manhattan. I mean, over the years, we had Martha Stewart convicted here. We had, just in the last year or two, we had Robert De Niro in the Robert De Niro civil trial. Well, one thing that's interesting about this Sean Combs trial that I don't think I've ever seen is so many witnesses that are subpoenaed to appear in the trial. We must have had a good four or five witnesses who were subpoenaed to appear. A couple of them said they definitely didn't want to testify. One of them would have pleaded the fifth, but was given immunity. So he testified. He said it was the last place he wanted to be. And what that enables is the defense to really kind of co-opt them as their witness. WALKER: You're talking about the ex-assistant. NEUMEISTER: Yes, George Kaplan, I believe is his name, and he appeared and said all these wonderful things about Sean Combs. He still sends him birthday greetings every year, although he did remark that he invited Combs to his wedding and Combs didn't even respond. So, you know, I don't know how that plays to the jury. But yeah, you know, there's so many witnesses and the defense lawyers more than I've ever seen in I think any trial I've witnessed in 33 years covering the courts, the defense lawyers keep treating a lot of these witnesses as their friendly witness. WALKER: I want to get back to the defense and his defense team, but let's talk about the jury for a minute, because a lot of people ask me about that since I have been in court with the two of you. And obviously, you know, the jury is anonymous. Eight men, four women, and then the six alternates, and it's like a slice of life from New York. NEUMEISTER: Well, there's many kinds of anonymous juries, and this is not a super anonymous jury like you have at a terrorism trial where by the end of the trial, all you know is they had numbers. It doesn't seem to be the kind of anonymity that jurors sometimes get to protect their safety or things like that. So, it's more of a milder version of an anonymous jury. But one thing I've seen with this jury that I've hardly ever seen with a jury is incredible attention to every witness. They turn in their chairs, they're pointed toward the witness, they're scribbling notes like mad. I've never seen so much as a juror yawn, although I did see Kid Cudi, he was yawning several times. SISAK: To your point, Larry, I think, you know, you talk about the anonymous jury, or at least the anonymity in that we don't know their names. These high profile cases, more and more, you're seeing judges take extra steps to protect the jury. And in the case of Sean Combs, you also had allegations of witness tampering, witness interference, leading to his arrest in September of 2024. So that could also explain why some of these witnesses are reluctant to come forward. NEUMEISTER: That's the main reason he wasn't given bail, is that they felt he was a threat to witnesses and had reached out to a couple of them. WALKER: Now, in New York, court cases are not televised. We do have sketch artists who are allowed to be in the courtroom, and then we are able to show those sketches. And we see a very different looking Diddy. His hair is completely gray, his goatee gray. He is allowed to wear his own clothes, as is Harvey Weinstein. Let's talk a little bit about what we're actually seeing that people aren't privy to. SISAK: What we've learned from this trial is that Sean Combs, according to his assistant who testified, was using Just For Men to hide gray hair and he had jet black hair up until the time he was arrested and put in jail last year. And then we also learned that hair dye is not allowed in jail. So in court, he has had this gray salt and pepper hair, goatee. He has been allowed to wear for the trial, sweaters, button down shirts, khakis and the like. It's a stark difference in look. NEUMEISTER: I'll tell you though, the guy is so involved with his defense, it's like off the charts, kind of amazing. I don't think I've ever seen this to this degree before. There was a witness, it was Kid Cudi, where at the end of his testimony, the prosecutors got him to say he believed Sean Combs was lying when he said he didn't know anything about his car when he brought it up. Kid Cudi's car was exploded in his driveway one day with a Molotov cocktail. And absolutely destroyed. And so he had a meeting with Sean Combs some weeks after that. And at the very end of the meeting, he said, brought up the car. And Sean Combs said, 'oh, what are you talking about? I don't know anything about that.' And after, as soon as that, the prosecutor finished asking the questions, got that response, then two lawyers, one on each side of Combs looked to him Combs said no, and only then did the lawyers inform the judge that there would be no more questioning. SISAK: I recall being in the courtroom earlier in the trial when some images were shown from some of the videotapes at issue here with these sex marathons that have become known in his parlance as "freak-offs." And there was a binder of some of these images, and Combs was sitting next to his lawyer and waved over, hey, I want to see those, and he's looking through them and he's holding the press, the public. We were not allowed to see these images. Their graphic images. The defendant, of course, was allowed to see them and he held them in a way that we could not see what he was looking at. And then he passed it back. And then other times he's hunched over a laptop computer looking at exhibits that are showing text messages and emails that were exchanged over the years with various people involved in the case. And then when there are breaks, we see him standing up, stretching, turning around, looking at his supporters in the gallery. His mother has been there. Some of his children have been there, some of his daughters have left the courtroom during the especially graphic testimony. But at other times, when his children are there, when his supporters are there, he's shaping his hands in the shape of a heart. He's pointing at them. He's saying, I love you. He's whispering. There was a moment when another reporter and I were sitting in the courtroom during a break and Sean Combs turns around, there's nobody in front of us and he asks us how we're doing. We say hi back to him because you're in such close proximity. We're only 10 feet apart or so. I'll pivot quickly to the Harvey Weinstein case where there's not as much of that because while Harvey Weinstein does have a contingent of supporters, it's mostly paid supporters, his publicist, his lawyers, his jury consultant. People that he will wave to and talk to and acknowledge as he's being wheeled into the courtroom. He uses a wheelchair to get in and out of court. One of the interesting things that ties the Sean Combs case and the Luigi Mangione case is one of the lawyers, Marc Agnifilo, represents both of those men. Karen Friedman Agnifilo is the lead defense attorney for Luigi Mangione. She is married to Marc Agnifilo. They are partners in the same law firm and Marc Agnifilo is ostensibly the lead attorney for Sean Combs. He is also assisting on Luigi Mangione's defense, both in the state and federal case. WALKER: In the beginning of the Combs case, the jury was shown that explosive video that the public already saw in the L.A. hotel hallway of Combs dragging Cassie and kicking her when she's on the ground and he made a public apology on his social media to her. And his lawyers have said that he's not a perfect person and he has anger issues, but he's not charged with domestic abuse. SISAK: The refrain from the defense has been that, if anything, there could have been domestic violence charges brought against Sean Combs back in 2016. Those charges would have been brought in a California court by Los Angeles police. There has not been any real discussion of an investigation in 2016 of any effort to charge Sean Combs with domestic violence at that time. So, in some sense, while it's a thread that the defense is pulling, that he's actually charged with sex trafficking and racketeering in this federal case, it almost is a bit of apples and oranges in the sense that the violence that the defenses conceding to, prosecutors allege, was part of the mechanism of the racketeer of the sex trafficking. In other words, they allege that Sean Combs used violence to keep people quiet, to people compliant. NEUMEISTER: And a lot of charges like domestic violence are all kind of things they could have brought against Sean Combs years ago. Well, there's a statute of limitations that would rule out certain charges. And certain charges just, there is no federal domestic violence charge. So when the feds go after somebody, they look for what kind of charges are federal crimes. And in this case, sex trafficking, bringing people across state lines to do illegal sex acts, or racketeering, which can involve many different things, including that 2016 tape of Cassie being beat up by Sean Combs by the Elevator Bank in that Los Angeles hotel. That, actually, is a centerpiece of the evidence against Combs in this case. WALKER: The point is that that hallway video of Diddy beating up Cassie is actually part of the case of racketeering because he's using violence to control people. NEUMEISTER: Listen, there's violence all through this, right Mike? SISAK: The Kid Cudi arc in this narrative, which is in 2011, Cassie, who's the longtime girlfriend of Sean Combs, starts dating Kid Cudi. Combs is upset about that, according to this witness, Capricorn Clark. Combs comes into her home holding a gun, kidnaps Capricorn Clark, takes her to Kid Cudi's home, where according to Clark, Combs was intent on killing Kid Codi. Now, Cudi was not there. He testified at this trial, so Combs is alleged wish of killing him did not come to fruition, it may be a bit of a crafty strategy by the defense in this case to own the things that they cannot otherwise explain away. They are owning the things the jury eventually is going to see. The video of the 2016 assault at the hotel in Los Angeles. A video, by the way, that was suppressed from public view until it aired last year on CNN. NEUMEISTER: And that is part of the racketeering charge, it's alleged that he used all of his employees and his whole security staff to cover up these things. So, when that happened in 2016 at that L.A. hotel, they paid like $100,000 to try to get the copy of the security video so it would never become public. WALKER: I think we've covered so much that I'm not sure what we have left to cover, although there probably is more. But are there any big points or big arcs that you think are worth mentioning? NEUMEISTER: In the beginning, the first week, it was all Cassie's testimony and there was so much evidence in everything and her testimony about sexual acts and such but last week it seems all about violence and threats and how he would have used his employees to cover up the crimes. SISAK: We've heard from Cassie about the freak-offs. We've heard from some of the male sex workers that were involved. And then we're seeing other pieces of evidence that prosecutors say show the depravity of these events and then also the network of people that Combs relied on to keep them secret, to keep going, but to keep them secret. WALKER: Well, I think that that about sums it up. The judge in the beginning said he wanted to be done by July 4th. SISAK: We've had people ask us, all three of us that have been in court at various times, what do you think of the prosecution's case so far? And as reporters, we don't have opinions on things, but I would urge caution whenever there's a case, let the presentation play out, get to the end of the prosecution case, but also listen to the cross-examination, listen to what the defense puts on. Often defendants will not testify on their own behalf because it can be perilous, but there are cases where it might be advantageous. NEUMEISTER: When there's celebrities involved, it's a wild card, where you really can't predict what's going to happen and how that's going to play into the jurors' minds and everything else.
