Luigi Mangione Say Trump Memo Is Part of Effort to ‘Taint…

Luigi Mangione’s legal team is calling out what they argue is a “concerted” effort to prejudice their client, pointing to a recent memorandum from current POTUS Donald Trump as an example of this alleged campaign in action.

In court documents filed Friday, Oct. 17, as viewed by Complex, attorneys including Karen Friedman Agnifilo plead with New York judge Margaret M. Garnett to consider their concerns over Mangione’s right to a fair trial. As Agnifilo argues, the Department of Justice and the White House “have coordinated to cultivate and disseminate negative public rhetoric deliberately designed to taint the prospective jury pool.”

In the docs, Trump’s issuing of a memorandum titled “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence” in September is cited, specifically his apparent allusion to Mangione. While Mangione isn’t directly named in the memo, Trump does make mention of several cases, including one described as the “2024 assassination of a senior healthcare executive.”

As his lawyers have pointed out amid their concerns over the United States v. Mangione case, this is “clearly a reference” to their client, who is now in the middle of simultaneous cases centered on the December 2024 shooting death of UnitedHealthcare exec Brian Thompson.

“This declaration was made despite the fact that, only nine days prior, in New York State Supreme Court, the judge dismissed the terrorism charges against Mr. Mangione, finding that the defendant’s conduct did not rise to the level of terrorism (and noted that the federal government also did not charge him with terrorism),” Mangione’s lawyers write. “The judge held that there ‘was no evidence presented of a desire to terrorize the public, inspire widespread fear, engage in a broader campaign of violence, or to conspire with organized terrorist groups.’”

As Complex’s Shawn Setaro reported in September, the New York State case against Mangione did indeed see terrorism-related charges being dismissed. The next hearing in that case is slated for Dec. 1, while a hearing in the federal case against Mangione, which carries the possibility of the death penalty if convicted as charged, is set for Dec. 5.

The latest filing from Mangione’s lawyers underscores the gravity of the death sentence possibility, notably asking the court to dismiss either the indictment or the Notice of Intent seeking that outcome. The Maryland-born 27-year-old’s legal team also argues that the circumstances surrounding the federal case make it “unlike” previous ones of its kind.

“The heart of the defense’s concern is that the government has engaged in purposeful, repeated, unlawful actions specifically designed to hurt Mr. Mangione’s chances at fair legal proceedings and a fair trial and as part of a wider government effort to further a political agenda,” lawyers wrote in the docs. “That these same officials—whether acting directly or through their subordinates—have continued on this course even after this Court has explicitly directed them not to has caused this case to be unlike any prior death penalty case.”

In the concluding statement in their letter to Garnett, Agnifilo and company reiterate their criticism of the government’s handling of the case, saying their actions are part of a “political agenda” in which their client has been made a pawn.

“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 his him as a pawn to further its political agenda,” lawyers wrote.

The latest from Mangione’s legal team comes after efforts to secure a dismissal of the federal charge against him that, if a conviction is secured, carries the possibility of a death sentence.