A federal judge has threatened to sanction any Department of Justice official who continues to make prejudicial pretrial statements about Luigi Mangione, the suspect accused in the December shooting murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
The firmly worded order out of Manhattan singles out two DOJ officials who on Friday and Saturday had retweeted televised remarks by President Donald Trump.
“He shot someone in the back as clear as you’re looking at me,” Trump had said of Mangione in a Fox interview. “He shot him right in the middle of the back — instantly dead. This is a sickness.”
Trump’s remarks, posted on the White House-affiliated X.com account Rapid Response 47, were then reposted by DOJ spokesman Chad Gilmartin and by Brian Nieves, a chief of staff at Main Justice.
“@POTUS is absolutely right,” the DOJ spokesman said in a post that Nieves retweeted. Both posts were later deleted.
In her order, US District Court Judge Margaret M. Garnett referenced a federal rule that bars prosecutors, defense lawyers, and their employees from making prejudicial pretrial statements, particularly concerning the guilt or innocence of parties in their cases.
“Multiple employees at the Department of Justice may have violated Local Criminal Rule 23.1,” she wrote.
Garnett had specifically referenced the rule during Mangione’s April court appearance. On that date, she directed prosecutors “to ensure that the highest levels of the Department of Justice, up to and including Attorney General Bondi, were aware of and understood they were bound by this Rule,” as she noted in Wednesday’s order, referencing AG Pam Bondi.
“Two high-ranking staff members of the Department of Justice, including within the Office of Attorney General, appear to be in direct violation of this Rule and the Court’s April 25 order,” she wrote Wednesday.
Garnett gave Mangione’s prosecutors an October 3 deadline to submit a sworn declaration from Sean Buckley, the deputy US attorney in Manhattan, or from an official at Main Justice, explaining “how these violations occurred.”
The judge also ordered that Buckley spread word “within the Department as appropriate” that future violations may result in financial sanctions or contempt of court findings.
Mangione’s latest efforts to dodge death
The judge’s order came in rapid response to Mangione’s latest defense filing, which on Tuesday night accused Trump and top federal officials of repeatedly going on Fox and X to falsely smear Mangione as an anti-fascist terrorist.
The seven-page defense filing is Mangione’s latest legal effort to dodge the death penalty in the case.
In it, Mangione’s lawyers list a half-dozen recent times when Trump, his Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, and White House spokespeople publicly painted Mangione as part of some dangerous, organized wave of left-wing terror.
It was filed hours after Miller appeared on Fox and called Mangione “a self-described, so-called anti-fascist that was then celebrated by other self-described anti-fascists,” the lawyers wrote.
Miller also called Mangione’s supporters — who criticize the healthcare system online and turn out in droves for his court appearances — “really communist revolutionaries.”
“The Government very well knows this statement to be false as they are in possession of his alleged extensive journal writings where the writer never once mentioned being anti- (or pro) fascist,” wrote lead attorney Karen Friedman Agnifilo, who signed the filing.
Agnifilo references other recent instances, including by Karoline Leavitt, the White House spokesperson, who called Mangione a “left wing assassin” during a briefing on Monday.
In a White House press release later Monday, Mangione was referenced as part of a wave of “crushing radical left violence”
Trump had also specifically referenced Thompson’s shooting — calling it “the vicious murder of a healthcare executive in the streets of New York” — during his Oval Office remarks on the night of Charlie Kirk’s assassination. “Radical left political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives,” Trump said.
“The Government has indelibly prejudiced Mr. Mangione by baselessly linking him to unrelated violent events, and left-wing extremist groups, despite there being no connection or affiliation,” Agnifilo wrote Tuesday night.
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have yet to file their response to Mangione’s death penalty challenge. Their press office declined Business Insider’s request for comment on Wednesday’s judicial order. Spokespeople for the DOJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Thompson was shot from behind on December 4 outside the Midtown Manhattan hotel where he was about to deliver an early morning address to UnitedHealthcare shareholders.
Mangione was arrested in a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, after a five-day manhunt.
He remains in federal custody in Brooklyn; his next court dates are December 1 in state court in New York and December 5 in federal court before Garnett.
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