Luigi Mangione set to plead guilty to federal charges in CEO murder case, report says

Molly Crane-Newman, New York Daily News on Aug 13, 2026

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NEW YORK — Luigi Mangione is set to appear in a Manhattan courtroom Friday in his federal case for an eleventh-hour hearing that has fueled speculation he’s planning to plead out in relation to the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

The New York Times reported Thursday that Mangione was planning to plead guilty to unspecified federal charges, citing two anonymous sources. The Times report could not be immediately confirmed.

A plea in federal court would complicate the parallel state prosecution being handled by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, which is set to go to trial in less than a month. Mangione would be expected, if he does enter a plea on the federal charges, to move to get the state case dismissed.

Bragg’s office and a spokesman for Manhattan U.S. Attorney Jamie McDonald declined to comment when asked by the Daily News about speculation he’s going to cop to federal charges and the hastily scheduled hearing, which was requested jointly by his defense team and the feds. Mangione’s team did not respond to the Daily News’ inquiries.

Without knowing the charges he’s planning to plead guilty to, it’s unclear what the advantage might be in Mangione’s gambit.

The Maryland man, a University of Pennsylvania graduate, federally faces charges alleging he stalked and surveilled Thompson to carry out the executive’s killing, which the Trump Justice Department is trying. The charges carry a possible life term.

In Bragg’s case, Mangione, 28, is charged with the killing of Thompson in a New York State indictment, including charges of second-degree murder, criminally possessing a weapon and a forged instrument, and related offenses. If convicted, he could be sentenced to up to 25 years.

Mangione has pleaded not guilty in both cases.

Authorities allege Mangione tracked Thompson after laying out plans to kill him in a manifesto that lamented corporate abuse and deadly greed in the health insurance industry. He allegedly fled the state after gunning down Thompson and was arrested five days later at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania.

The young man has garnered immense public support rarely seen for a defendant accused of murder, amid frustration felt by many Americans over exorbitant health insurance costs. Dozens of people have sought to attend his court hearings, and stickers and posters depicting him as a saint can be found on almost every lamppost in the vicinity of the lower Manhattan courthouses.

A last-minute plea in the federal case would suggest a multilayered strategy by Mangione’s defense, which has argued he’s been exposed to double jeopardy from the moment he was extradited to New York to face charges of fatally gunning Thompson, a 50-year-old father of two, as the executive arrived to set up for an investor conference at the Hilton hotel in Midtown Manhattan on Dec. 4, 2024.

Under New York law, a person cannot be separately prosecuted for two charges based on the same act or criminal transaction unless each offense contains a distinct element and the provisions defining the offenses “are designed to prevent very different kinds of harm or evil.”

It was on that ground that a midlevel appeals court in October 2020 agreed that former Manhattan DA Cy Vance could not prosecute Paul Manafort for the same fraudulent scheme for which he had been tried and convicted of in federal court. Manafort was represented at the time by the recently sworn-in Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump’s former personal lawyer.

Assistant District Attorney Joel Seidemann, the lead prosecutor in Mangione’s state case, said in a July filing that if he tried to plead out federally to thwart the state prosecution, Bragg’s office would advise Garnett to consider whether to accept it and whether Thompson’s family opposed it.

The possibility of a plea puts Bragg’s office, which just two years ago secured a conviction against Donald Trump, at odds with the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office, now led by a Trump appointee.

Mangione was first indicted by Bragg’s office on murder and terrorism offenses. However, he was unexpectedly whisked to a federal courtroom first after landing on a Wall Street helipad surrounded by a phalanx of armed agents and then-Mayor Eric Adams.

Operating in the final weeks of the Biden administration, the federal prosecutor’s office committed to Bragg’s case going to trial first, deference that appeared uncertain once Trump retook office.

Mangione’s team has publicly brushed off rumors he’s considering a plea. Earlier this summer, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, a former Manhattan DA prosecutor, criticized such reports as “troubling” and as an attempt to prejudice him.

The defense team, which has received more than $1 million in donations, has racked up several pretrial wins, including getting the top counts in both cases dismissed. The defense successfully argued the terrorism charges originally leading the state indictment had been misapplied and that murder through the use of a firearm, the death penalty-eligible count that topped the federal case, was unsupported by the other charges.

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