Luigi Mangione pleads not guilty to all charges as his fans, including a notorious whistleblower show up in court to support him
Luigi Mangione pleaded not guilty to all charges Friday in the federal case brought against him alleging he killed United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
Mangione, who has attracted a significant following, denied murder through the use of a firearm, another gun offense and two counts of stalking.
Military whistleblower Chelsea Manning again showed up to support the alleged murderer in Manhattan Federal Court.
It was the second time Manning – who spent seven years behind bars for passing secrets to WikiLeaks – has been at court to see the man accused of shooting health care executive Brian Thompson on a Manhattan street.
Manning, 37, was one of several supporters who turne up at Manhattan Federal court for the latest hearing for Mangione, who now faces the death penalty if found guilty.
The fans claim Donald Trump is only seeking Mangione's execution because the president needs a 'fall guy'.
Speaking outside court before his latest appearance before a judge, Mangione's supporters said that Trump was targeting him even though there was nothing 'solid' against him.
They defended Mangione, who is accused of shooting UnitedHealthcare chief executive Thompson, and said that he had 'great values' and that health insurance is a 'right'.
Mangione, a 26-year-old Ivy League graduate, was due to appear at the federal court in Manhattan to enter a plea to murder through the use of a firearm, firearms offense and two counts of stalking.
The allegation of murder with a firearm makes Mangione eligible for the death penalty, if he is convicted.
The hearing was the first since Attorney General Pam Bondi – with the support of Trump – said the Justice Department will ask for a penalty of death .
Trump has called the December shooting a 'cold-blooded, horrible killing' but Mangione's lawyers have called top level administration officials' comments a breach of protocol and are demanding the possibility of the ultimate penalty be removed from the case.
Around 20 Mangione supporters stood outside the courthouse in downtown Manhattan hours before the hearing hoping to get a seat.
Many of them were masked – an apparent tribute to Mangione – and declined to comment.
But Sandra Minestro, 33, said that she was there to show her support because she thought that 'healthcare is a right'.
'It's not right that people don't have the money to pay for health insurance', she said.
Asked if she was there to support Mangione or for healthcare reform, she said: 'A bit of both.'
Minestro had a sign that said: 'Lives over profit' and 'Free Luigi' with a cartoon of Luigi from the Mario Bros. video games.
Manning, a former Army private, was among them. When she appeared at a Mangione hearing in February she said she was there to exercise her sixth amendment rights to view court proceedings.
April Cheree, 49, said she wanted to make sure Mangione's 'rights weren't being violated'.
She said she got the Covid-19 vaccine but that it had caused her problems with her employers – she is currently between jobs.
'I do understand his unhappiness, his disgruntlement because I'm also on a wait, I'm still waiting for return calls and waiting for return (medical) services', she said.
'We all feel that. I understand why he's unhappy and fighting for someone to hear him'.
Cheree said that she was impressed with Mangione going to Penn State and being valedictorian of his high school class.
'I haven't found anything solid in reference to what they're saying to make him a criminal', she said.
'He does have really great values proper to the (allegations), a really great family'.
Trump was seeking the death penalty because Mangione 'has a really strong population following him'.
Cheree said: 'They have to find the guy with the perfect stigma. It's not because he's the worst guy, he's the top guy. He's got the right image. In most cases when they have a fall guy, he fits perfectly. They want us to view him that way and place this disposition on him'.
Prosecutors claim that Mangione shot dead Thompson, 50, a father-of-two, outside a Hilton hotel in Midtown Manhattan on December 4 last year.
He allegedly used a 'ghost gun' and wrote 'Deny. Depose. Delay' on the bullets in a sign of his anger at the healthcare system which reportedly sprang from his long term back problems.
Mangione allegedly fled New York and was arrested days later at a McDonald's in Altoona, Pennsylvania, 200 miles away.
Police allegedly found a notebook in his backpack in which he wrote that killing Thompson was 'targeted, precise, and doesn't risk innocents'.
Police believe Mangione saw the execution as a 'symbolic takedown' and that he saw himself as a 'hero'.
Mangione also faces 11 counts in a state court in New York – the trial there will take place first – including murder in the first degree and murder in the second degree.
The murder charges state that he killed Thompson 'in furtherance of an act of terrorism' and as a 'crime of terrorism'.
Additionally, Mangione faces gun charges in Pennsylvania.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Scottish Sun
7 hours ago
- Scottish Sun
My sister took her own life after making sick pact with online chat room stranger who flew over from US to watch her die
Aimee had been a happy child but withdrew into an online forum during the pandemic 'RABBIT HOLE OF DESPAIR' My sister took her own life after making sick pact with online chat room stranger who flew over from US to watch her die Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) A WRITER has described how a man flew from the US to watch her sister take her own life after meeting on a "sick" online forum. Adele Zeynep Walton, 26, told how her sister Aimee was discovered dead by cops in a hotel room in October 2022. Sign up for Scottish Sun newsletter Sign up 5 Adele and Aimee Zeynep Walton, pictured as children Credit: instagram/@adele_walton 5 Adele Zeynep Walton, 26, described how her sister was found dead after being on an online forum Credit: instagram/@adele_walton 5 Adele and Aimee seen together as little kids Credit: instagram/@adele_walton Aimee, who was just 21-years-old at the time, was found with a total stranger, who had flown from the US to watch her die. The sisters - who were raised in Southampton, Hampshire, both had active online lives growing up, but Aimee more so. Adele said that Aimee, who was neurodivergent, was bullied as a teenager and turned to online communities instead. When the pandemic hit, Aimee withdrew even further into the online world, her sister - writing in The Telegraph - explained. She broke up with her boyfriend and spent an increasing amount of time in her room. The first Covid lockdown in England was announced in March 2020, and the third was on January 2021. It was in October 2022 that Adele - who was 25 at the time - and her parents were told that Aimee was dead. Aimee was found in a hotel room in Slough, Berkshire, 60 miles away from her home - with a stranger. They had met through a sick online forum that "partners" up people looking to end their own lives. This forum was also how she got her hands on the substance that killed her - reportedly from Kenneth Law, who has been linked to 88 deaths in the UK. According to The New York Times, the forum was founded by two men who run several "incel" websites. Adele took it upon herself to visit the thread and said many of the posts said: "Your family don't care about you" and "You should do it." She told The Guardian that the man who was with her little sister could have been "living out a sick fantasy as an incel who wants to see a young and vulnerable woman end her life'. The man told police he had been working for the 11 days he spent in the hotel room with Aimee. Adele wrote in The Telegraph: "This forum has taken at least 50 UK lives, including my sister. "From looking at the forum myself, I can see just how easy it is to end up in a rabbit hole of despair, where vulnerable users are told their loved ones don't care about them. "Being informed by police that Aimee died in a hotel room with a stranger who she met on this forum, and who flew from the US to witness her death, still haunts me." Adele now campaigns about the harms of the online world and has written a book called Logging Off: The Human Cost of Our Digital World. If you are affected by any of the issues raised in this article, please call the Samaritans for free on 116123. 5 The pair grew up in Southampton, Hampshire Credit: instagram/@adele_walton
NBC News
7 hours ago
- NBC News
Harvard gets new legal backing from 5 Ivies and over 12,000 alumni
Twenty four universities, including five Ivy League schools, and more than 12,000 alumni took measures to back Harvard University in its legal battle against the Trump administration, which has threatened it with slashing billions of dollars in grants. Princeton, Yale, Dartmouth, Brown and the University of Pennsylvania, along with several other schools, filed an amicus brief on Monday in support of the nation's oldest university, arguing that the funding freeze would impact more than just Harvard, due to the interconnectedness of scientific research, and would ultimately hinder American innovation and economic growth. Also on Monday, the group of 12,041 Harvard alumni filed a separate brief describing the withholding of funds as a 'reckless and unlawful' attempt to assert control over the school and other higher education institutions. 'The escalating campaign against Harvard threatens the very foundation of who we are as a nation,' the alumni said in the brief. 'We embrace our responsibility to stand up for our freedoms and values, to safeguard liberty and democracy, and to serve as bulwarks against these threats to the safety and well-being of all.' The amicus briefs aim to provide expertise or insight to the court, but the schools and individuals are not parties in the lawsuit itself. The filings come after Harvard in April rejected the government's list of 10 demands, including auditing viewpoints of the student body, a move that the administration says is aimed at addressing antisemitism on campus. After the government threatened to freeze $2.2 billion in multiyear grants and $60 million 'in multi-year contract value,' Harvard hit back with a lawsuit. The brief filed by the universities included other prominent institutions like Georgetown, Johns Hopkins and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The only Ivy League schools missing were Cornell and Columbia universities. The schools argued that the partnership between the government and academia has long led to critical advancements, from the The Human Genome Project to the Covid-19 vaccine. And that funding cuts to one school could endanger research at others. Harvard, MIT and Princeton, for example, have received funding from the National Institutes of Health for a project that could potentially yield tools to treat Alzheimer's disease. 'The work cannot continue at individual sites; MIT cannot use machine learning to uncover patterns, for example, without data from Princeton and Harvard,' the brief said. The universities said in the brief that the cuts would only cause more harm to the United States' ability to compete in science and academia. 'These cuts to research funding risk a future where the next pathbreaking innovation — whether it is a cure for cancer or Alzheimer's, a military technology, or the next Internet — is discovered beyond our shores, if at all,' the brief said. Sally Kornbluth, president of MIT, said in a letter to the school's community that it was critical to make a legal argument against the funding cuts. 'Although the value to the public of federally funded university research feels obvious to us at MIT, we felt compelled to make the case for its countless benefits to the court and, in effect, to the American people,' Kornbluth said. The Harvard alumni filed their brief in support of the school's motion for a summary judgement submitted last week. If granted, the summary judgment would allow the court to decide the case without a full trial. The alumni, which include comedian Conan O'Brien, author Margaret E. Atwood and Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., wrote in the brief that the administration's 'end goal is to narrow our freedoms to learn, teach, think, and act, and to claim for itself the right to dictate who may enjoy those freedoms.' The alumni also slammed the administration's concerns over antisemitism as rationale over the funding freeze. 'We unequivocally condemn antisemitism and every other form of discrimination and hate, which have no place at Harvard or anywhere else in our society,' the alumni said in its brief. 'Yet charges of antisemitism — particularly without due process and proper bases and findings by the Government — should not be used as a pretext for the illegal and unconstitutional punishment and takeover of an academic institution by the Government.' The government's demands on Harvard, the alumni said in the brief, 'have little or nothing to do with combating antisemitism' or any other form of discrimination on campus. 'Rather, its demands stifle the very engagement, teaching, and research that bring communities together, heighten our understanding of one another, and advance solutions that directly benefit us all,' the brief said. The show of legal support comes amid a monthslong back-and-forth between the administration and Harvard University. Most recently, the school sued the administration after Trump issued a proclamation last week denying visas for foreign students trying to come to the U.S. to attend the prestigious school.
North Wales Chronicle
11 hours ago
- North Wales Chronicle
Civil Service workforce up 2,000 to almost 20-year high, figures suggest
A total of 550,000 people were employed in the Civil Service as of March 2025, according to new data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS). This is up from 548,000 in December 2024 and a rise of 1% year-on-year from 544,000 in March 2024. Headcount fell to 416,000 in June 2016, the month of the EU referendum. Since that date, the total has risen steadily, driven chiefly by the impact of Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic. The Government announced in April this year that it planned to cut around 2,100 staff from the Cabinet Office, as part of a plan to shrink the Civil Service and reduce the cost of bureaucracy. Some 1,200 roles will disappear through redundancies, while 900 will be transferred to other departments. The latest Civil Service headcount of 550,000 is nearly a third higher (32%) than it was in 2016, or an increase of 134,000. Of the 550,000, almost 443,000 are full-time roles and the remainder are part-time positions. The last time the quarterly headcount was higher than the current figure was in June 2006, when it stood at 553,000. The total was on a downwards path during the second half of the 2000s and this trend continued into the 2010s until the EU referendum in 2016, after which the headcount began to climb. It grew by 40,000 in the years between 2016 and the start of the pandemic, as thousands of people were recruited to manage the complex and lengthy Brexit process. There was then a further jump once the pandemic was under way, as the Government hired staff to oversee huge projects such as the furlough scheme, testing for Covid-19 and the rollout of the vaccination programme. Headcount increased by 56,000 between March 2020, when the first lockdown began, and March 2022. By June 2024, just ahead of the general election on July 4, the total had reached at 546,000, since when the figure has increased by a further 4,000. Responding to the data, a Government spokesperson said: 'This increase is driven by recruitment to operational roles, including tax collectors and probation officers. 'As part of our Plan for Change, we are creating a more agile and productive state – reducing back-office costs to deliver savings of over £2 billion by 2030 and targeting spending on front line services. 'We have already announced a new cross-government fund for exit schemes to reduce staffing numbers over the next two years, as well as introducing measures to make it quicker and easier to remove poor performers from post.' Chancellor Rachel Reeves said in March that Civil Service running costs would be reduced by 15% by the end of the decade. As well as abolishing quangos such as NHS England, ministers have committed to increasing the proportion of civil servants working in digital and data roles, creating a workforce 'fit for the future'. Two Government departments together account for more than a third of the full Civil Service headcount: the Department for Work & Pensions (17.6% of the total) and the Ministry of Justice (17.5%). The next largest are HM Revenue & Customs (12.9%), the Ministry of Defence (10.5%) and the Home Office (9.2%). These five departments together account for just over two-thirds of the total headcount.
