(NewsNation) — Luigi Mangione’s defense team said in a letter to a federal judge that the Trump administration is making him “a pawn to further its political agenda.”
Mangione is charged with the December 2024 killing of Brian Thompson, the former UnitedHealthcare CEO, and the Department of Justice is seeking the death penalty, which the former student’s legal counsel is attempting to have dismissed. They are more broadly attempting to have the federal murder indictment against him dismissed.
In the letter dated Oct. 16 to U.S. District Judge Margaret M. Garnett, his attorneys wrote, “Mr. Mangione has been treated unjustly as part of a coordinated ongoing campaign by the United States government to paint him as a terrorist and violent leftwing extremist, despite there being absolutely no evidence to support these assertions.”
It continued, “The significance of these prejudicial statements is that they have life or death consequences for Mr. Mangione. The statements have caused irreparable harm because the government’s sustained public commentary, designed to further a political agenda, will have a prejudicial impact on a future jury. Since the government is seeking to execute Mr. Mangione, he will already be subject to a more politically conservative jury pool, as any prospective juror, in order to be ‘deathqualified’ has to affirmatively be willing to execute him as punishment.”
The letter concluded, “Mr. Mangione is one young man, alleged to have acted alone, fighting for his life in three separate cases, against the full force and might of the entirety of the United States Government that is actively and persistently using him as a pawn to further its political agenda. This is the very definition of prejudicial where the consequence is death. For these reasons, as well as the reasons articulated in Mr. Mangione’s September 19, 2025, motion, this Court should dismiss the indictment or, in the alternative, dismiss the Notice of Intent seeking the death penalty.”
In September, Garnett issued a warning to the DOJ, saying that “multiple employees” at the DOJ could have broken Local Criminal Rule 23.1, a federal rule, by speaking publicly about Mangione’s case.
The judge wrote, “The rule goes on to state that any opinion as to the accused guilt or innocence or as to the merits of the case of the evidence in the case is a matter that presumptively involves such a substantial likelihood.”
Mangione was charged with a firearms offense, stalking and murder through the use of a firearm. The 27-year-old was also charged in New York and Pennsylvania for first-degree murder in furtherance of terrorism, two counts of second-degree murder, weapons charges and a count of using a forged instrument. He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole for the state charges.
The DOJ declined to comment when NewsNation reached out.