America Finds Luigi Mangione Not Guilty

August 14, 2026

Dear Donors to the Official Luigi Mangione Legal Fund for All 3 Cases,

As you are undoubtedly aware, today Luigi pled guilty to federal stalking charges that resulted in the death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Mr. Mangione told the court this morning, “I shot Mr Thompson in Manhattan and he died. When I did so, I understood that my actions would place him in fear of death or serious bodily injury. I knew what I was doing was illegal.”

You all have raised over $1.5 million dollars to give Luigi the best possible defense. We trust that the decision to plead guilty was fully his own, made in consultation with that defense. Today's hearing is the end of one chapter in Luigi's trials, but the saga is far from over. On December 18, Judge Margaret Garnett will sentence him for the federal stalking charges. Luigi still faces state charges in NY that carry the possibility of life in prison. While his legal team has already filed motions to dismiss the state charges based on double jeopardy protections, the state prosecutor has already made clear that he is still seeking a life sentence. Luigi also still faces state weapons charges in Pennsylvania. With the rest of you, we will continue to have Luigi's back and raise funds for all three cases.

You are all here supporting Luigi because, like us, you know that our current healthcare system is predicated on paying shareholders and executives large sums to keep millions of people sick and to let millions of people die. We all know that it is fundamentally at odds with our natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Luigi's admission of responsibility places him in a long line of principled individuals who acted outside of the law in pursuit of higher ideals of justice. Just as we remember John Brown for his sacrifice for our natural right to liberty, history will remember Luigi Mangione for his sacrifice in the name of our natural right to health -- which is what the pursuit of happiness has always meant.

Luigi did something immeasurably brave today: he took responsibility for his actions, placing his trust in his supporters and in history to vindicate him. He gave up his future and his fortune to strike a blow against an industry that parasitically extracts profits from the most vulnerable moments of people’s lives.

Whatever follows from this point, we have two responsibilities: first, to ensure that he continues to receive robust support and encouragement for the rest of his time in prison, however long that is. Second, to vindicate him by building our collective power to make change. The government and the healthcare parasites are afraid that you might stop suffering alone, and realize that we are all suffering together. Because as soon as we realize that we are all suffering together, we have everything we need to collectively put a stop to it. 

Thank you for your continued support for Luigi.

The December 4 Legal Committee

Source

Source is CNN https://edition.cnn.com/2026/08/14/us/live-news/luigi-mangione-hearing-plea-deal-talks

https://www.tmz.com/2026/08/11/luigi-mangione-defense-lawyers-want-younger-jurors

Source: Lauren conlin from X

Edit: I added the link

[deleted]

Transcript of the interview:

Chris Cuomo: I have said it before, and I will say it every time, okay? I'm embarrassed that this guy has an Italian-American ethnicity and a name that uh speaks to that ethnicity. I am embarrassed that people think that murder is a way to address a bad system. And you can be absolutely right about what's wrong with healthcare, but you are so wrong about anything that Mangione did that makes anything right.

And I gotta tell you, he is obviously paying attention to his fans because it was so embarrassing for anybody who supports what this guy did. That he said, no, no, no. I didn't know what I was doing. I'm asserting as my defense extreme emotional disturbance. I didn't know. I couldn't form the intent. I was out of my mind. Because it makes you guys look like you're out of your mind if you support what he did. But now he dropped the idea. Why? I turned to my attorney, famed defense counsel Mark Geragos. A little surprising it took one day.

Mark Geragos: I'm actually not surprised. I...And I think you've put your finger on the pulse kind of unintentionally and let me tell you why.

Chris Cuomo: Can't I have done it intentionally? Can't I have just made a good point?

Mark Geragos: No.

Chris Cumo: Go ahead.

Mark Geragos: Look, I gave you kudos when you were talking with O'Reilly the other night, so I don't want to give you back to that.

Chris Cuomo: Yeah, you don't want to overdo it. All right, go ahead.

Mark Geragos: Exactly. I don't want your head to get any bigger. But the fact remains that they have a federal prosecution behind this case. So right now, the sequencing is they go first in state, second in federal. Given that, there's no way that they can stick to the EED because the EED only applies in the state. It doesn't apply to the federal.

You can't walk them into a death penalty by virtue of doing the EED. The only criticism and mind you, these are some of my closest friends in the world there. The only criticism I would have is if you look at the transcript from yesterday, they knew the judge was going to unseal certain things after they redacted it. This was entered. People forget this. This plea, if you will, because that's what I always call it, was entered in September of last year.

The only thing that happened yesterday was the judge said, okay, now I'm going to unseal it. What they should have done in retrospect is just have said, just because people would be running with the other interpretations, they should have said, no, judge, we're withdrawing, so there's no reason to go through that.

Chris Cuomo: Explain the federal piece again about why you can't use this there.

Mark Geragos: They don't have this same, whatever this is, 210 EED component as a defense in federal. So you don't have this mens rea. You don't have the mindset diminishing mitigation. It's something you would use in the penalty phase if you got convicted over in federal. But it's part of the conundrum that they face. They've got both the feds and the state coming at them. They don't have double jeopardy protection.

So the fact that they go first in the state, win or lose, doesn't matter. The feds are coming afterwards. They can't do the EED first, because if they do the EED first, they're going to get hammered in the federal proceeding.

Chris Cumo: Counsel Garagos, thank you for making that understandable, even to me.

Mark Geragos: [Laughs] I just have one other thing that I would like to point out.

Chris Cumo: Please.

Mark Geragos: Okay. You talked, you had that whole segment about players going to the White House and people saying keep politics out of sports or the other. You know, you and I both remember less than 10 years ago, I represented Colin Kaepernick. We're the same people who were saying that then, now. So I'm leaving it at that.

Chris Cuomo: I get you. And look, my phone blew up immediately. Thank God. You know, I said, look, I'm not a black athlete. But it hits different What this administration has said. And yes, they did criminal justice reform with Van Jones, and that got them credibility within the minority community. But what's happening with gerrymandering, what happened with Voting Rights Act, what happened with people who spoke up like Kaepernick is also part of the equation here.

You're right to bring it up. Appreciate you.

End of interview.

The interview link was posted by u/WhereIsTheSemicolon and I'm posting the interview in a playable video for everyone who said they couldn't get it to play and the transcript of the interview for those that requested it. The discussion has been going on in u/WhereIsTheSemicolon's post Mark Geragos on why Mangione’s legal team abandoned key defense strategy | CUOMO

Mark Geragos on why Mangione’s legal team abandoned key defense strategy | CUOMO on NewsNation.com

The move came without explanation, but a legal analyst says the federal case likely weighed on Mangione's mind

Luigi Mangione withdrew a proposed psychiatric defense in the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson just hours before he would have been required to provide prosecutors with additional information about his mental condition Thursday.

Lawyers for Mangione, 28, sent a one-sentence letter to the court, telling Judge Gregory Carro that they were withdrawing a notice made public just a day earlier that signaled plans to pursue a psychiatric-based defense in his state case. There was no explanation.

The about-face may have been Mangione's idea, according to Randolph Rice, a Maryland-based attorney and legal analyst who has been following the case.

Luigi Mangione appears at a pretrial hearing in Manhattan Criminal Court in New York City on June 17, 2026. Mangione is accused of murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Bryan Thompson in December 2024. (Barry Williams/New York Daily News/Pool)

"He might have had a change of heart and said, 'Wait a second, I'm going into state court. I'm admitting that I did this. How is this going to play when I'm facing even more serious charges in federal court in January of next year?'" Rice told Fox News Digital Friday.

The daring move would have required Mangione to concede that he shot Thompson, a 50-year-old father of two, at trial. If he were later convicted under New York's extreme emotional disturbance law, the murder charge would be reduced to manslaughter, and the potential sentence would be reduced from 25 years to life in prison to five to 25 years.

Speaking with Fox News Digital before Mangione's reversal, high-profile criminal defense attorney James Leonard said it would be "a very risky trial strategy for the defense.

"They are basically telling the jury that Mangione committed the murder, but here is why he did it and, because of this, you should nullify his guilt," he said. "If the jury accepts that, it would be an epic win for the defense team. If the jury rejects that, it [would] likely mean that Mangione will spend the rest of his life behind bars."

Rice said concerns about the federal prosecution likely factored into the decision.

"I have no doubt that this weighed on Mangione's mind," he added.

The former Ivy Leaguer is also facing a separate federal trial expected to kick off early next year, and it's unclear how such a defense in the state case would impact that one. It carries stiffer potential sentences, and there is no federal equivalent to New York's emotional disturbance law.

A spokesperson for Mangione's team did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

"We knew that this was gonna be one of these cases that's gonna have a lot of twists and turns, and it is certainly living up to that," Rice said.

Legal observers previously told Fox News Digital that the psych defense would have required Mangione's attorneys to convince jurors that he experienced a profound loss of self-control stemming from an intense emotional disturbance at the time Thompson was gunned down outside a Manhattan business conference.

Prosecutors, meanwhile, have alleged that Mangione meticulously planned the killing for months, documenting his thoughts in journals and traveling across the country before shooting Thompson in the back outside a business event in New York City, where neither of them lived.

"I have no doubt that this is not the last time we're going to see something like this where either the defense says something or even the prosecution may say something and then it completely gets changed and flipped on its head moving forward," Rice said.